Monday, December 26, 2016

I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala


Right before the break I met a newly hired RA from our Brooklyn campus.  Her favorite book was, I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray.  It is the real story of the book’s title, an Indian woman from Guatemala who shares her life’s story to the editor.  The book is broken into short chapters from her youth to her leadership roles in helping form unions to address the massacres, unfair labor laws, and mutilations of her peers.  The early chapters focus on her family and the destitute living conditions they existed.  She also shares the traditions and customs of her people.  She shares the differences among young boys and girls, working on the farm, and the death of her younger brother.  The trauma that faces Rigoberta and her family is of epic proportion. There is no happy moments in this book, even when she seemingly is on the verge of winning the land from the locals, they learn they were tricked by signing a form that had Spanish, which they couldn’t read and lost the land after two years of cultivating it.  This is a very hard book to read.  Interesting to note there is a book out that disputes the reality of the claims made by Rigoberta, so it leaves it in question.  Nonetheless, hard to think anyone could think these things up by themselves.  While learning the customs of a tribal village within Central America is educational, the death, destruction, rape and pillaging makes this one a very hard read with no sense of hope for closure for the exiled lead character.   Hard to read this one, but understand the importance of the story being told.

No comments:

Post a Comment