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.
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