We talked a little about this in class, but I still think it is worth bringing up in this blog post. I find that Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings provides a great example for how different cultures and societies all over the world paint their own map of storytelling. Borges mentions imaginary species from practically every major culture from all over the world that still exist in various countries today. When I was reading this, I did begin to start questioning why he did not include more beings from other places in the world.

Could it be that he only included the ones that had the most storyline behind them, or was it that many other cultures with imaginary beings have been forgotten throughout history. This idea then sparked a new one in conjunction with the Columbus readings. It made me think about how European colonists made no real effort to preserve or maintain the mapping out of the native inhabitants stories that they came across, and it made me realize how difficult it must have been for the natives to try and preserve their cultural heritage and continue mapping their stories for future generations to come.

The native Caribbean people must have had so many different, enticing stories about imaginary beings in their culture, but unfortunately these natives, along with their stories and maps of their culture, were practically driven to extinction and many of their tales do not survive.

This brings up the interesting notion of how hard it is to map a culture or society when nobody is around to carry on their legacy or be a guide to that extinct communities’ map. Maybe someday we will be able to read and walk through the maps of the indigenous people that lived not only in the Americas but also the rest of the world.