Malinche's Conquest

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Summary: Gentle elegy for the bruised woman of Mexican history
Review: For a brief moment in the 16th century, a teenage slave was the most influential woman in the world. Malinche, to use one of her many names, was the translator and go-between in perhaps the pivotal cultural drama of the last millennium - the moment when the Old World represented by Hernan Cortes, conquered the New World in the form of Montezuma's Mexico.

Anna Lanyon, an Australian backpacker, stumbled onto the story of Malinche while travelling in Mexico in the 1970s. Intrigued, she returned home, studied Spanish and Portugese to literary translation level, and revisited Mexico in search of this enigmatic woman.

So few are the clues, and often so contradictory, that Lanyon works like an archeologist with a soft-haired brush to bring Malinche's life into relief from its bedrock of myth.

In official Mexican history, Malinche is the "betrayer". Her name forms the root of a modern-day word for traitor. Lanyon finds a teenager blessed with intelligence, intuition and a sharp instinct for survival. Her options were few. Given as a sexual slave to the conquistadors, Malinche became Cortes's concubine, adviser, and mother of his first child. She died in obscurity, probably before she was 30.

But those close to her admired her. Lanyon makes the point often forgotten in facile renderings of the conquest: to vast numbers of people in what now is Mexico, Montezuma's "Aztecs" (more accurately, the Culua-Mexicans) were the feared and hated enemy. Malinche was therefore not a betrayer so much as a warrior, within her own context. But even more than that, she was a woman, condemned to slavery as a child, "assigned" to alien men when not yet 20, who simply did the best she could.

While the full personality of Malinche may be irretrievable from what history has left us, Lanyon does great work in debunking many of the myths about her and in exploring how national myths come about. And tantalisingly an impression emerges of this accidental figure of history: a woman we would like to have known, a woman from the lowest rungs who took a hand, for better or worse, in changing the world.

Rating:
Summary: Malinche's Conquest
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book. I have since bought several copies for friends and family members. It is a wonderful look at the way that society views one of the most important women in the Americas in the past 500 years. People are quick to judge her as a traitor or whore, but after reading more about her life as a slave and the conditions around her, I feel that she was an incredible survivor who became the mother of a new generation of people. This book which chronicles Anna Lanyon's journey through Mexico to discover who Malinche was, inspired me to learn more about the Conquest and Mexico's history, as well as more about who the flesh and blood woman "Malinche" might have been. I have since read, "La Malinche in Mexican Literature - From History to Myth", and "The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico" by Bernal Diaz. I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful read!!!
Review: In a world of information technology and instant gratification, I admit I skim over books to grasp only the information I need in the least amount of time. In looking for information on Malinche, I didn't think that I was interested in reading about the author's journey in piecing the puzzle together. I just wanted her to get to the point!

I was so wrong! Beautiful story, priceless information, and a rare balance of sensitivity to the subject while maintaining objectivity.

Highly recommended, especially to Latina women.

Thank you, Ms. Lanyon, for your priceless contribution to history.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful read!!!
Review: In a world of information technology and instant gratification, I admit I skim over books to grasp only the information I need in the least amount of time. In looking for information on Malinche, I didn't think that I was interested in reading about the author's journey in piecing the puzzle together. I just wanted her to get to the point!

I was so wrong! Beautiful story, priceless information, and a rare balance of sensitivity to the subject while maintaining objectivity.

Highly recommended, especially to Latina women.

Thank you, Ms. Lanyon, for your priceless contribution to history.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this Book!
Review: Not only was it great to find a book on Malinche, but also a book that looks at her in a light other than as the evil betrayer we all thought she was. I started the book thinking "How could she have done that?" and ended up feeling sorry for her predicament in life. Or at least understanding why she made the choices she did. This book wasn't just a defense of her actions, but it explained why she became the enemy she has become and who and why made her that way. She was used while she was alive for political purposes and she was manipulated and used for political purposes hundreds of years after her death also.

Rating:
Summary: Loved this Book!
Review: Not only was it great to find a book on Malinche, but also a book that looks at her in a light other than as the evil betrayer we all thought she was. I started the book thinking "How could she have done that?" and ended up feeling sorry for her predicament in life. Or at least understanding why she made the choices she did. This book wasn't just a defense of her actions, but it explained why she became the enemy she has become and who and why made her that way. She was used while she was alive for political purposes and she was manipulated and used for political purposes hundreds of years after her death also.