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Summary: This book is NOT an autobiography
Review: Many of those who criticize Ms. Menchu's work subscribe to the fallacy that "I, Rigoberta Menchu" is an autobiography. After David Stoll published "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans," Ms. Menchu responded, "'Yo, Rigoberta Menchu' no fue una autobiografia, sino un testimonio." ("'I, Rigoberta Menchu was not an autobiography, but rather a testimony.") Marc Zimmerman, an expert on Guatemalan resistance literature, has stated that testimonial literature implicitly contains the possibility of "other voices." In essence, Ms. Menchu aimed to speak for her community rather than herself. The idea of the collective voice is a well-known characteristic of Mayan culture. There is also a level of common sense that eludes many of Ms. Menchu's critics. Assuming that the book is an autobiography, does it really matter that one of Ms. Menchu's brothers was actually shot by the army instead of burnt alive. This hairsplitting does not conceal the fact that the Guatemalan military committed such atrocities in the death of over 200,000 Guatemalans and the destruction of over 400 villages. "I, Rigoberta Menchu" played a pivotal role in bringing international attention to the plight of Guatemala, which, as Stoll himself acknowledges, few other people could have done. The real question raised by Stoll's book is not who died where and how, but does Rigoberta Menchu truly represent "all poor Guatemalans." To understand Guatemalan history in the early 1980s, I recommend Jennifer Schirmer's "The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy" and Stoll's more persuasive work, "Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala." "I, Rigoberta Menchu" has its faults but it is a superb introduction to the debate over recent Guatemalan history.
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Summary: A very true account...
Review: Menchu may have indeed fabricated the fact that any of this happened to her; however the things she describes in this book *did* happen to a lot of people. It shouldn't be read as an autobiography or a lie. It is most certainly quite accurate for many, many Guatemalans. I think it is marvelous that someone came forth to write this.
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Summary: She Lied
Review: Ms Menchu falsified her account and, when exposed, said "I really meant my Guatemalan countrymen as family, not necessarily my own family." That is not what she said. She should have had to return the Nobel Prize. Someone this dishonest certainly did not deserve it.
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Summary: A gut-wrenching, vivid, moving tale.
Review: Ms. Menchu's book exposes the horrors of the political genocide waged on the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. This aspect of the book is a much-needed eye-opener for U.S. citizens in particular, as U.S. policies are implicated in the tragedy of Guatemala in the 1980s. In addition to documenting the kinds of terror the indigenous people have survived, Ms. Menchu describes the traditions, values and daily life of the Mayans with great feeling and detail. An important book to read, despite the fact the Ms. Menchu has drawn from the experiences of her compatriots to create a composite version of the campaign of terror as it affected her people.
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Summary: i like her personal experience
Review: she's is a real maya, and she is able to express herself as an european, she's a great translator of the maya culture and is an example to the new generation
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Summary: a story of survival
Review: Take a whole community of people, stick them in the middle of nowhere and take away almost everything that they've been using to survive for the past hundred years. Take away their land and their way of life. Separate them and divide them against each other. Make them suffer to keep themselves and their family from dying. Will they make it? Some will, and the rest do not have a million dollar prize waiting for them when they've died trying to survive. This is not a reality show; this is simply reality, Rigoberta Menchú's reality.
If there was ever a story that needed to be told, this is it. I, Rigoberta Menchú will declare most of our modern problems, whether it is with our family or friends, bosses or co-workers or anyone and anything else that is complicating our lives, null and void. This novel gives new meaning to the word survival.
This book should affect everyone who reads it because it is not a recollection of history that happened a long time ago. This book was written in the nineteen eighties, not the eighteen eighties. The atrocities that took place all happened in most of our generation. It is real, and though it isn't happening in our home. It's close enough.Rigoberta Menchú told her story when she was twenty-three years old. She starts off by explaining the traditions of her people, the Mayan Indians. She explains all their rituals, and the significance of each and every one of them. The background given was important to understanding why holding on to their culture was such an important part of life for them. There was not one ritual that I can remember that did not have an explanation. The bottom line was that her people based their lives on those who were before them. They strived to live the way their ancestors did, and when the Spaniards took over Guatemala, everything changed, and holding on to their way of life became a struggle. Even when Spain was done with Guatemala, their presence had a lasting effect on the Indian people. Their land was taken away, and they were forced to work for ghastly wages under inhumane conditions. They could no longer live as a community because all of a sudden they had to pay for things that the community used to provide, but could no longer afford to. Some of the Indian people turned their backs on their community to join the remaining Spaniards and others who were in control. These conditions caused a lot of death and trauma to the Indian communities and this story tells the world about all the atrocities that were committed, and how Rigoberta and her family helped her community, and eventually others, fight for their right to live.
It is inspirational to read about all the risks that were taken, with no regard to their own lives, in order to change the conditions they were living in. Rigoberta Menchú and her family saved peoples lives. They educated Indians on how to defend themselves, and keep from getting killed. They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, Rigoberta Menchú got entire communities going in the right direction to make changes that would better their lives.
There is no way that I could relate to her situation. No one I know could have been strong enough to live under the conditions that they did. They knew they were destined to work hard and get nothing in return from the day they were born. They did not sit and complain and ask the government for help, because it wasn't there. They sucked it up and worked their hardest every single day they were alive. Admirable is not strong enough a word to describe their survival.
I cannot end this review without mentioning that there has been some controversy about this novel and I will not say what it is. If you really want to know, you can find out for yourself. And when you do, put yourself in Rigoberta's shoes and see if you are a strong enough person to do what she did. I know that I am not, so I cannot point any fingers, can you?
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Summary: An Uncle Tom's Cabin For Our Time
Review: The comparison is apt. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a great novel about slavery which was based upon real events but incidents were invented so the story would appear more dramatic. David Stoll and others exposed the inventions of this work. Who doesn't think the Marxist/feminist analysis of this book was the work of French writer Elisabeth Burgos-Debray? Modern lit crit types could have a field day contrasting the Rigoberta of this book, who is something of a literary invention, with the real person, but their politics won't let them. It's hard to find fault with a book which has such good intentions, tells an important story, and helped many thousands of people in desperate circumstances. And yet the same could be said of Stowe's book, which is an odd read today. Stowe's sense of christian virtue and Burgos-Debray's concept of "political consciousness" serve identical literary purposes. As for "Uncle Tom", um, I won't go there.
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Summary: Invaluable information, but difficult to read
Review: The story is of tragedy and chaos in the Guatemalan civil war. Whether specifically true or not, all of the events of the book happened to someone at some point in that country. It's more a story of a diminishing race and civilisation being forced to come to grips with a modernized world. The reason it is so difficult to read is the double translation from Quechua to Spanish to English. Menchu also tends to jump around from topic to topic a lot. I think this is an important story, but essential to students of Latin American culture and society. It is also important for the study of human atrocity as well as a great foundation for the culture and practices of Latin American Indian societies.
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Summary: Read the book in spanish to understand it better.
Review: The title of the book (in spanish) tells you the reason why this book is not a "lie" as some people say. First, I recommend to read this book and other latin american literature books in spanish. After all if Rigoberta Menchu learned spanish in 3 years, you can do it to! The title in Spanish reads...ME LLAMO RIGOBERTA MENCHU Y HACI ME NACIO LA CONCIENCIA..(My name is Rigoberta Menchu and this is how I grew a conscience) If she (Rigoberta) would not have told her testimony than who would have??I don't think it would have been David Stoll! Because afte she spoke, Mr. Stoll critiqued her and called her a lier. Now, while reading this book I found greater meaning to its title. We often do not think about our conscience. But what if you lived what she lived and were told what she was told. Would your concsience be clean if you kept this to your self?? For us who never experienced her life as a guatemalan "campesina" we do not want to believe this ever happended. Then again we do not even believe in the traditions of the Quiches. If we can not even respect our "Nahual" (animals) How can we respect the right of a human being to tell her story and free her concsience. I enjoyed this book, not only because of its content, but because of its cause and the effect it had in what we now know as "Indigineous liberation movement". She is a great woman and if you want to learn about other people and their sufferings. Than please read this book with an open mind!! Better yet follow her footsteps and learn a beautiful language, SPANISH!!
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Summary: The world is changing: a review on the mayans
Review: There are times in your live when you realize that all the complications and "suffering" that you have to endure is something miniscule. That your whining about how the grass isn't growing pretty in the lawn or about how your life [is hard] because you are only getting paid $10, $12 dollars an hour and that is not enough to pay the $40,000 dollar car and the house and all those thing you need for your "simple" life are a testament of how God is not fair to you. But then, when you read something like I, Rigoberta de Menchu you come to realize that maybe, just maybe all the tragedy in your life is not so tragic. That is the beauty of this book. The realization that there are so many things out there in the world that we not even acknowledge as something real and with substance is what this book reminds you of. We live in a cynical, cynical world that focuses on money, [adult relations], and entertainment and most of the times the problems concerning other parts of the world are irrelevant until one of our own is involve. This is reality, but there is the other realities of people who really suffer and have to face adversity everyday and we, the privilege, don't even care.
(...) I, Rigoberta de Menchu, is an eye opener. It is cruel, sad, gross, devastating, and uplifting book all at the same time. It has value, morals and character something that our community, our entire nation sometimes lacks and that reminds you how little we know about the problems that the human race faces in general. Nevertheless, the narration is extremely moving and compassionate and brought to ink very vividly. I have to admit that there are segments of the book, which are really hard to digest and absorb. There are images that stick to your mind and your spirit like sun to the ground, they might leave you for a while but you know that once inserted they will always comeback to hunt you and will never leave you, not really.
(...)The book reveals the treatment that Mayas, and Indians in general have had to endure for so many years. Seclusion, rejection, discrimination, assassination, and many, many worse things that make your heart shatter. While reading this book you can help but think how humans are capable of doing so many atrocities to fellow members of their species without discriminating if they are men, women or children. It is something barbaric that in a nation like the U.S. seems to be like a Mel Gibson film, something unreal that during our lifetime should not be happening but, that unfortunately it is and with more frequency that it should ever be. Rigoberta accomplishes to tell the reader about the importance of community and respect towards any person. She establishes importance of unity that should be contemplated as something precious among human beings because that is the only way were are going to survive in this world that becomes smaller every day. Personally, it was hard to read this book because I have fellow countrymen that are Mayan and it is really sad to acknowledge the problems they face are also happening in Mexico. Also, because I spend years studding about how magnificent and powerful their civilization used to be and how modernization is finishing with all the values and practices that made their culture one of a kind in the history of the world. I'll be the first to tell you that modernization is essential for the development of the world, without it we could not survive in this fast growing world, but it is truly a shame that we have to take advantage of people that all they desire is to maintain an style of life that doesn't require technology to be self-sufficient. This is what I am against of, taking advantage of people because we can. This world needs more compassion and understanding. Until the day we realize that we are doomed to keep making mistake like creating conflicts with people we believe to be "uncivilized" when perhaps they are the rational side of the story. In my point of view, Rigoberta's message is that of -life and freedom for all- I think that is all she wants for her fellow Mayan brothers and sisters to be allowed to live a simple life where their custom will be protected and where their freedom will be left alone with nature. It seems to me that all they ask for is to be allowed to unite with nature in the future like they did in the past. Now, is that too much to ask?
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