I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

I lived in Guatemala for about a year. My only regret is that I didn't read this book first. Fear of the military was spread to the expat community. Because we knew no indigenous people that also spoke Spanish we didn't understand the Mayan culture. The strength of the indigenous people was evident every day. I was horrified to see the tiny women and men who strapped wood, water and other things to their heads while they walked barefoot and had babies on their back while walking long distances barefoot. The nobility of the Guatemalan Mayan communities was obvious and the treatment they received at the hands of the ladinos was truly horrible. The banks had cat walks with soldiers pointing guns at the customers. The poor Mayans could stand in line for long periods of time because whenever a ladino came in they jumped the line in front of the poor Mayans. Guatemala is a truly beautiful country marred by the racist behaviors of the ladino population. This book really touched me and it is obvious why Rigoberta received a Nobel Prize. Her wisdom,intelligence and courage is an inspiration. It's one of the best books I've ever read....and I read 2 or 3 books a week. She is inspirational.

I’ve been non-stop reading this book about the remarkable yet humble indigenous woman, who emerged out of oppressive poverty and ethnic discrimination by educating and empowering herself, and eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is hard to put the book down once you have opened it. It makes you aware and makes you cringe at the hardships, injustices and the layers of oppression against the hardworking and less educated poor, not only in Guatemala but also elsewhere in the world. I highly recommend this book, especially for those of us who want to learn about poverty from the “worm’s eye view” (i.e., first-person narratives, in addition to from the “bird’s eye view” of statistical analyses — both are very important).

Excellent read - insightful perspectives on indigenous issues and colonialism at its most brutal, told in a way that brings the reader close to the story, the author, her family and struggles .

Beautiful, but terrible. This is the story of Rigoberta Menchu Tum and her life as a native Guatemalan struggling to survive amidst poverty, encroaching industrial logging interests, political corruption, and racism. Born to a family of subsistence farmers and itinerant workers, Menchu’s life was balanced on the razor’s edge of starvation. She saw family members lose their lives from hunger and from the brutal treatment received from supervisors at the coastal farms (including spraying pesticides from airplanes with complete disregard to the workers--and children!--laboring in the fields). Menchu survived and learned Spanish in order serve as an advocate for other native people. She helped to form and organize parties of political resistance as well as taught native people methods of self defense. The style of the writing is perhaps what proves to be most captivating about the book. Having learned to write in Spanish only three years before penning this book, Menchu’s style is simple, frank, and honest. The translator has taken pains to retain the vocabulary and style of the original text even including much of Menchu’s repetition. This lends the text a raw, journalistic feel.I enjoyed reading this book. Though some of the political tensions and actions may have been beyond my grasp, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Menchu’s native customs and beliefs. The book starts with an explanation of her tribe’s birth, marriage, and death ceremonies. These underscore the close bonds of community that exist throughout the village--bonds that are tragically torn asunder as the book progresses. While the text has a clear bias, it was nonetheless quite eye opening to the difficulties natives of Guatemala faced and sheds light on an all too easy to overlook population.B+

For schoolIts good

This story will inspire you and make you take a good, hard look at just how fortunate most of us are who live in the United States. We can never truly know the experiences of another unless we walk in their shoes. Rigoberta Menchu will take you places that will disturb and enlighten. I have been fascinated with Guatemala and its Mayan people and because of this book, look at life a little differently now. If you have a passion for learning about other cultures, this is a must read.

It's a good book that describes the struggles of the Mayan population in Guatemala. It is best to read in conjunction with different articles that criticize this book and also the foreword. This was not written by Rigoberta and it is important to consider the politics of translation as well as transcription. She gave her testimony to Elizabeth Burgos, who collected the information from the interview in Spanish and created the text. At the time when Rigoberta gave her testimony, she only had been speaking Spanish for three years.I read this for one of my college classes at Princeton and I just discussed this book at my book club.Another thing to consider is the genre that this book falls in. It is not a memoir or an autobiography. It falls under the category of latin american literature known as tesimonio. This differs from the direct translation of testimony. I recommend readers do some research on the politics of testimonio and whether or not all that is said is needed to be true.It is a great book to start a conversation on the politics of ethnicity and whether books like these are needed to be entirely truthful or factual!