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Oct 12, 2010

Abigail rated it:

I read this back in high school, and recall being horrified by the author's tale of incredible state brutality and great personal suffering. We had some family friends involved in solidarity and human rights work, in connection with Central America, and I volunteered once a month at a church-affiliated cafe that raised money for their efforts.

I have since learned that the author, who presented this as an autobiography, actually created an "amalgamation" of many people's ex More...

27 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2007

Anna rated it:

This book is a memoir of Rigoberta Menchu's childhood and later years in Guatemala as an Indian woman. According to her story, she grew up uneducated in a small community with very strong rules and traditions. Her people, the Indians, were in conflict with the Ladinos (specifically the wealthy) for many years. As a result, her father, mother, and several siblings died.

After reading this book, I found out that she had fabricated many important details in the story. On the very FIRST More...

5 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2011

Francesca rated it:

Had been looking for a book related to Guatemala as am travelling there and this seemed like an obvious one but got totally put off after reading various reviews. After talking to people here in Guatemala, who say despite any inaccuracies (lies critics say) and despite her subsequent political career which is also somewhat controversial here - her book really brought world attention to the Mayan cause and is an incredibly important book to read, I bought it. Though clearly not 'great literature' More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 06, 2011

Rita rated it:

In 1983 Elisabeth Burgos met the 23-year-old Rigoberta Menchu and spent a week interviewing her and made that into this book, which is partly autobiography and partly 'testimonial' speaking for the experience of the whole Indian community of Guatemala [[60% of the popul. is pure Mayan, tho divided into 3 language groups and many smaller subgroups:]. [Book transl. into English by Ann Wright.:]

Horrifying how the mountain peasants are exploited by plantation owners on the coasts, living More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 08, 2008

Regan rated it:

Reading through some of the reviews written by others, I've found that David Stoll's indictment of Menchu for not adhering to the "pure facts" is still alive and well in the academy. There seems to be a tendency to ignore some very important factors that lead to the creation of this book, particularly the genre, testimony, and the nature of memory itself.

Testimony, or testimonio, is a literary genre that in many cases (although certainly not all) involves a testimoniante ( More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Oct 27, 2007

David rated it:

one of those books that are sad and leaves nightmares. The book written by Rigoberta Menchu tells the world of the cruelty that went in Guatemala as the "Silent Holocaust", a genocide upon the Indians in Guatemala. The conflict all start off when the new president took land from the rich to give to the poor as a civil rights movement, but a US Fruit company disliked the idea and took the US gov. that communist activity was going on in Guatemala, therefore triggered the genocide...
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0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Susan rated it:

Read this book a long time ago, when I was in Berkeley in the 1980s, it was kinda de rigeur. Just picked it up again from the bathroom reading pile in the house in Vancouver where I'm renting a room for the year (my new roomie is really active in native radical politics). I hadn't given much thought to the book since I heard the news that Menchu fictionalized certain parts of it, wanted to see if I still found it powerful. I did. Not so much for the politics, which even when I read it the first More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 31, 2008

Ling Juan rated it:

This book is about Rigoberta, her family and her community. They were going through a harsh, grief and tragic time. They are Indians that lives high up in a mountain with no fertile lands. Oneday the landowners decided to get back their lands because the Indians started to have crops. Rigoberta and her community thought of traps that will prevent the people from coming into their lands. During this period, a lot of people stuffer from torture and death, including Rigoberta's mom, dad and brothe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 04, 2011

Maiga rated it:

While in Guatemala I brought a copy of "I, Rigoberta Menchu" to better understand the culture, politics, and history of the place I was visiting. It's a beautiful book especially to read while surrounded by the described scenery. I asked many Kakchiquel Maya in the Atitlan region their thoughts on Rigoberta. Many were inspired simply by her incarnation of an Indigenous woman who had shared their struggles on a world stage.

In the capital, the poor were less admiring. Many felt she More...

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Apr 15, 2009

Max rated it:

This book with an incredibly uncreative title is a falsified memoir by Rigoberta Menchu. The book describes a poor family who was forced to work and work until they got fired and then the Guatemalan army came in and destroyed their lives. First, Rigo's brother got killed and tortured in a completely unsituational way, and then her father got killed. After that, her mother was caught and raped. Then, she had to run away to America. This book at first made me feel pity for the narrator but ev More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 08, 2011

Liz rated it:

I took an anthropology seminar called Narrative Lives in which the first half of the semester was spent reading 3 life-histories followed by another book that evaluated, or bluntly stated, debunked much of the narrator and interviewer's credibility. I, Rigoberta Menchu was the third life-history we read, and I was completely touched by her eloquent story-telling, and her dreadfully touching and powerful struggle. I remember sitting outside, near done with the book, and dreading reading David S More...

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Sep 03, 2010

jiawei rated it:

It seems boring at first but gets more interesting as I have experienced. I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala, is about an Indian woman's life of fighting for justice. This book is educational and real. It provides me a vision of what a part of the world is like and what life is like there. If a person lives in a place where there is more peace and justice than there is in Guatemala, that person is lucky. Rigoberta Menchu, has met severe pain. She has faced the demises of many More...

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May 12, 2011

Xiu Ling rated it:

I, Rigoberta Menchu is known as an autobiography written by Rigoberta Menchu in Guatemala. Through this novel, she tells the readers how her people fight their entires lives with landowners and the government to live in peace with their lands. They are natives and therefore the lands originally belong to them. However, foreigners come and take away their lands. This book tells the tortures and struggles Rigoberta Menchu and her people face to fight for the return of their lands. Some of the even More...

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Apr 11, 2010

Ian rated it:

A tragic story of Rigoberta Menchu's life. The narrative is quite disjointed at times but that is mainly due to the way in which editor, Elisabeth Burgos-Debra, decided to present the material she gathered in numerous interviews with Menchu in the early 1980s.
The story of Menchu's life, as recounted here, is a terrible one. An early life of poverty in the Guatamalan hinterland is followed by a growing political awareness and a realisation of the inequality in which she lives. Stories of More...

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Nov 05, 2008

Ashley rated it:

This book is about an Indian women living in Guatemala. This book was ridiculously sad and later I learned that some of the events that took place didn't happen and that she over exaggerated which made me feel so betrayed because she's a liar and I don't like that. This book is an autobiography about her life and the hardships she had to overcome.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 17, 2009

Jogar01 rated it:

This book is awesome if read in Spanish! The English translation lacks in strength. For example, the title in Spanish is Me llamo Rigoberta Menchu y asi me nacio la consciencia. Where does the English translation mention anything about consciousnees. I feel the editors were trying to whitewash one of the symbols of Indigenous resistance and human rights defenders. The translation loses some of the beauty of her words. By the way, look at the cover of this edition. Rather than having a real life More...

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Aug 24, 2011

Kimberly rated it:

Because it was written as her second language, the voice throughout the book can be frustrating for some because it sounds like the voice of a 4th grader.

It did not give a good account of the history and context of the war. But!

From the point of view of a foreigner living in the Western highlands of Guatemala with the indigenous it opened up my eyes to the ways of the Indigenous Maya more than anything. And the gross injustice between the classes here in Guatemala that More...

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Apr 02, 2010

Jessica rated it:

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 Me More...

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Mar 22, 2010

Valarie rated it:

This less a biography and more an incomplete ethnography of the Quiche (Guatemalan Indian) people. The author has detailed passages about birthing ceremonies, rites of passage into adulthood, etc., but stops short when she gets to the "secrets" of Indian culture that apparently no outsiders are allowed to know. Menchu also frequently blames "The White Man" for all the evils in the world, claiming that they are responsible for teaching her people how to kill. Every civilizatio More...

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Jun 13, 2011

Elaine rated it:

This book is basically about the war fare between India and Spanish Army. Many things scarred me in this book. All the torturous parts in the story is so descriptive that it leaves an image in my head that i can't get rid of. The Spanish soldiers tormented Rigoberta's family! Her mom was basically drained out of her life and still left for vultures to eat her! then her brother was even worst! rocks in his eyes, skin ripped off, just terrible. you couldn't even recognize him afterwards. But More...

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Jun 12, 2011

Charles rated it:

This book is a very interesting biography about Rigoberta Menchu. She was a native villager who lived in Guatemala where she had a difficult life. She describes their practices in-depth and what happens when the military attacks. I thought it was a very moving story because her life is so different from my own. Her struggles on a daily basis are like a whole different world to me because I couldn't imagine what it's like. That's why I liked the book so much because it was a very emotional story More...

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May 29, 2011

Jonathan rated it:

I, Rigoberta Menchu is a testimonial biograhpy describing the events that occured in Rigoberta Menchu's childhood while she grew up in Guatemala. The book shows the conflict that was occuring between the ancient culture of the various Indian tribes and the modernized Guatemalans that descended from Spaniards. Menchu reveals to the world the injustice and brutality that the Indians of Guatemala faced, and it proves to be one of the most powerful pieces of literature. This book really had an impa More...

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Dec 02, 2008

Laurel rated it:

I, Rigoberta Menchu is about the story of the poor native Guatemalans. Their story is told by a poor Indian woman who learned how to speak Spanish later on her life. This autobiography was really sad and informative; it talked a lot about the Indian traditions and customs, but also mentioned a lot of deaths that were caused by malfunction. This was a book required to read over the summer for Global Study class, and was really boring. In the beginning, I felt really bad for the people that were b More...

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Jun 09, 2009

Joseph rated it:

I read this book out of neccesity. i needed to be able to be educated in the affairs of the world, at this time i am some what educated in the history of guatemala and the long history that native guatemalans have had to suffer through for hundreds of years. Rigoberta menchu tells of her story growing up as a child and having to constantly fight against the police force and governemennt. i learned from this book also that she had embelllished a little of it...but i figured out that it was only t More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Derek rated it:

I fully recognize that Menchu's voice--conversational, unpretentious, emphatic--is what draws most readers to I, Rigoberta Menchu. At the same time, I found it the most grating aspect of the book, full as it was of contradictions, superlatives, and simply repetitive insistences on the positive aspects of her culture and the crimes committed by her country during the Guatemalan Civil War. Which isn't to say, of course, that I don't think she has every right to tell this story; the crimes she righ More...

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Jan 04, 2009

Suzanne rated it:

I know all about the controversy - did she write the book? Didn't she? The point is that whether or not all of these things happened in particular to this one woman, Rigoberta Menchu, but whether or not they happened to not only her but women that she knew. I believe that this is a collection of events that happened all around her - and having lived in Guatemala for a short period and seen the reconstruction efforts of the Mayan people after the war that was waged on them during the 80's with More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 20, 2011

Diane rated it:

It has been a while since I have read this--but I remember it being very powerful. It is an autobiographical narrative of a Guatemalan woman trying to survive in a very dangerous society--unstable due to political and military unrest. She is brave and strong--and lives to tell the tale.

It shows the beauty of everyday life of common people and the savagery of those who are all about absolute power. It is very endearing and very tragic.

I would recommend this to anyone intereste More...

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Jun 07, 2009

Miles rated it:

This tells a story about a young woman named Rigoberta Menchu and all of the hardaches she goes thorough in Guatemala. She is an Indian woman and at this time in Guatemala, she is considered inferior and mistreated. She has witness many members of her tribe and her family being beaten and even killed. She was able to survive though and tell her story. She was awarded a nobel peace prize for her efforts to fight peace and this can be seen in her story. She is a remarkable woman and I recommend t More...

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Mar 19, 2009

Suki rated it:

We don't know if this book is biased because it seems like she hate those people. This book talks about her life as a Guatemalan and how she and the people she know suffers. There were some nasty things inside this book and i didn't expect it! I was like um.......... okay. I don't want to know any further. But i kind of liked it even though it sounds like a biography but it's not. If you dont know what genre this book is, you would think biography because you can feel that you are right there at More...

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Jan 22, 2011

Charlotte rated it:

I, Rigoberta Menchù
An Indian Woman in Guatemala (1984)
Edited and introduced by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray
Translated by Ann Wright

The story of an Indian woman in Guatemala, the discrimination and racism practised by the Latinos and of the gradual development of her political awareness. Again, like Mi Nombre Es Victoria, this is a book that you only pick up and read if you are particularly interested in the subject matter.

Originally a Spanish transcription of record More...

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