Knowing about the testimony’s alleged inaccuracies made me read more critically than I would’ve otherwise. However many liberties may have been taken, the indigenous struggle in Guatemala is given voice here, and it can’t be denied that Menchú’s people have long suffered violence and injustice. Although the first-person narration gives Menchú ownership over her story (and mimics the intimate yet mutable nature of memory), a lot of the prose felt like a rambling soliloquy and jumped around too much. ( )

And that's when my consciousness was born"
By sally tarbox on 22 December 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
The autobiography of a young Guatemalan peasant woman who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Menchu was an uneducated Indian girl, brought up between the family home, subsistence farming in the Altiplano, and the fincas (plantations), where the family would spend some months earning a little money in almost slave-like conditions.
Menchu's story took place from the 1960s to 80s; she tells of the very traditional Mayan lifestyle - its happiness and security but also the way Indians were dismissed by the Ladino (Spanish) population as almost a sub-species. Malnutrition, defrauding of the workers, and horrific accounts of peasants killed on the fincas by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, make for grim reading.
As government-backed landowners muscled in, trying to seize the Indians' lands, Menchu and her family got caught up in the peasant struggle for rights in a corrupt regime. Murders and violence became commonplace as the authorities tried to silence them...

Menchu has a powerful story to tell. Illiterate till adulthood, she narrates her account in interviews with an anthropologist. The result is an interesting autobiography, but one that would have been much more readable if given a literary touch. ( )

Review published here: https://travellingtheword.com/book-3-beauty-and-death-in-guatemala ( )

Biography of a Guatemalan woman who suffered gross injustice.. She learned Spanish and turned to catechist work as an expression of political revolt as well as religious commitment.

This was an interesting autobiography, or testimonial as Rigoberta calls it, but hard to read. The writing style is rather monotonous. In addition, the book is rather mired in controversy, ever since the publication of David Stoll's book: "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans". In this book, Stoll refutes points out many inconsistencies in Menchu's story and refutes some the details she claims as part of her life story. Despite these issues, "I, Rigoberta Menchu", does tell the story of a indigenous people, who have systematically been ignored, marginalized, discriminated against, brutalized, and been the repeated victims of attempted genocide. And this is one story which the world should be listening too. ( )

This was an interesting autobiography, or testimonial as Rigoberta calls it, but hard to read. The writing style is rather monotonous. In addition, the book is rather mired in controversy, ever since the publication of David Stoll's book: "Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans". In this book, Stoll refutes points out many inconsistencies in Menchu's story and refutes some the details she claims as part of her life story. Despite these issues, "I, Rigoberta Menchu", does tell the story of a indigenous people, who have systematically been ignored, marginalized, discriminated against, brutalized, and been the repeated victims of attempted genocide. And this is one story which the world should be listening too. ( )

The most influential reading of my adult life, by far. I cried and vomited as I read this book in college (that's how much of a reaction I had), and it may have contributed most to my ideals and interest in global activism. Unfortunately, I haven't followed through with most of my intentions to save the world, as I've given in to the allure of the typical American family life. :( ( )

It's too bad that it was discovered that much of what she said about herself turned out to be untrue. BUT as she said, it's the story of her people, whether it was her or another Indian Woman the context is real and largely ignored. Everyone should be required to read. It's the global learning and understanding that we need. ( )

This is a book of contemporary literature, which records the stuff of everyday life in a Guatemalan Indian community.

This is the biography of an Indian woman activist of Guatemala.

I found it fascinating to read about a life that is so different from what we in the industrialized world experience.

Her life story, which is told simply and plainly, is compelling.

Since this was written in the 1980's it is a bit dated. I have to wonder what the situation for the indigenous people and the laborers of Guatemala is today. I'm not sure the interenet would give an accurate picture. ( )

Rigoberta nació en San Miguel Uspantán, Departamento El Quiché, en Guatemala. Hace 23 años nació, y el castellano lo aprendió hace tres, sin libros, maestros ni escuela. Lo aprendió con su voluntad feroz por romper el silencio en el que viven los indios de América Latina. Se apropió el lenguaje del colonizador, no para integrarse a una historia que nunca la incluyó, sino para hacer valer, mediante la palabra, una cultura que es parte de esa historia. "Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú", dice llanamente, y en esa frase escueta se escucha la voz de todo un pueblo indígena que ha decidido liberarse. Sus palabras no son meramente de denuncia y de protesta. Son ante todo una enérgica afirmación de una manera de ser, de un derecho a ser lo que se es: una cultura específica, una comprensión del universo, una interacción con la naturaleza. La historia de Rigoberta hace eco a la historia de todas las comunidades indígenas de América Latina que han decidido arrebatarle la palabra al opresor. Cover

I was surprised and not surprised by the conditions that Rigoberta faced. The conditions on the Finca were awful- it's shocking that people would spray crops while workers are picking them. As awful as it was reading about, in some ways it wasn't surprising. I got to meet Rigoberta Menchu in high school, so it was exciting to finally read about her life and the hard work she did. ( )

I bought Me Llamo Rioberta Menchú y así me nació la Conciencia at a used bookstore over the summer and decided to read it a few weeks ago. I don't read much non-fiction, but occasionally I read biographies and autobiographies when they are connected to other areas that I'm interested in. I've been buying and reading a lot of "indigenista" novels, and wanted to connect the fiction that I'm reading to a real-life account of indigenous life in Central America. Her story is filled with the poverty, despair and death that were her family's lot in a Guatemala where the indigenous population was marginalized to a greater degree than I thought possible in the contemporary world. Interspersed with her personal story are chapters explaining different traditions and beliefs of her people, members of the Quiché indigenous group. She explained why her people strive to conserve their traditions, and how much prejudice and oppression the indigenous majority experiences at the hands of the ladino (mestizo and hispanicized) population of Guatemala. I found the explanations of her peoples´ belief system and its incorporation with the Catholic beliefs that were brought to Guatemala to be some of the most interesting parts of the book, because she explains with such clarity how the indigenous people of Guatemala were able to accept the Catholic conception of God into their own religious beliefs, and also how they were able to maintain so much of their indigenous heritage and religion even as they did accept the church into their communities.

As far as her personal narrative, it tells of her childhood in the countryside and of her family´s life, spent between the plantations of the coast and their home in the rural wilderness of Guatemala. As she grows older, she begins to follow her father´s footsteps into politics, and travels around her country, organizing people and especially women against the increasingly violent tactics of the government and the military. She sees some of her family members die some horrific deaths, and the atrocities that she describes are shocking. It´s sad to remember how recent events like this were to the present, and to think that, surely, groups of people in power are continuing to treat poor people in horrible ways throughout the world. Reading this, you hope that nobody would have to live through what Rigoberta Menchú experienced. It´s amazing that she was able to tell her story, and I appreciated reading it.

After I was done, I read some articles online about Rigoberta Menchú. She may have altered the truth in terms of a lot of the specifics of her book, and also painted her family as being poorer and more marginalized than they really were. Nonetheless, nobody discounts the suffering that she experienced, and her loss of many family members to an oppressive and unjust regime. I was a little disappointed to read that she, like many other autobiographers, felt the need to embellish the truth, but I still felt that her book was worth reading, especially for the ethnographic information that she conveys with such passion and depth. ( )

“I’m still keeping secret what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can found out all our secrets.” Indian society in Guatemala is filled with secrets. How many and what they are *about*, much less *are* is merely alluded to by Rigaberta as she recounts her life story and struggles. The narrative reads quite literally as if Rigaberta were telling her story directly to the reader. In so doing, she really tells us three stories: 1) Indian community life cycles, 2) Rigaberta’s life and work and 3) the history of the Guatemalan peasant revolution in the 60s-80s.

At the time of the telling, Rigaberta had only been speaking Spanish for three years, and deliberately learned it to better unite separate Indian communities with distinct languages and dialects against her and their common enemies: the Guatemalan government and rich finca landlords, who readily practiced discrimination, hostility, rape, land takeovers, massacres, and torture. She was never trained to read or write.

I expect that this (effective) primary source will be excellent fodder for many secondary sources that may make it more digestible. I recognize the need for Rigaberta’s voice to come through, but perhaps it could help broaden her audience by having a professional writer or biographer assist with smoothing the organization and clarity and such.

The raw power and emotion evident by what Rigoberta has to say makes this an important resource in bringing these issues to the international community. Though many secrets are still kept, this book is rich for curiosity seekers, social scientists, folks interested in labor and peasant movements, Latin American Indians, etc. ( )

This is the true story of Rigoberta Menchu, a native from Guatemala, born into poverty and slave-like conditions, just like the rest of her people. This book describes the living conditions of the indigenous people of Guatemala, their struggle to better those conditions, the obstacles they face (kidnappings, murders, torture). It is also the story of Rigoberta Menchu and her family, most of which is murdered in the struggle for equality. An inspiring and eye-opening story. ( )

Questions about its historical credibility aside - the concept "her family" can be used verrrrrry loosely - Menchu's narrative of the plight of the Quiche people in Guatemala is the focus of this volume, set amid her people's continued persecution at the hands of the Guatemalan government. ( )

14

10

Guatemala. ( )

Menchú, Rigoberta/Quiché women > Biography/Women revolutionaries > Guatemala > Biography