The Monkey's Paw: New Chronicles from Peru

by Robin Kirk

A gifted journalist portrays the people and politics of contemporary PeruNowhere in South America have the twin crises of political rebellion and economic collapse taken so high a toll as in Peru. Since 1980, thirty thousand people have died in the war between the Shining Path and government forces. At the same time, a disastrous economic decline has boosted to more than twelve million the number of Peruvians living in extreme poverty.

Drawing on Peru's rich history, journalist Robin Kirk combines interviews and personal narrative to present a vivid portrait of this turbulent country. The book opens with her first trip to Peru in 1983, just as the Shining Path guerrillas plunged the nation into sudden, violent change. Amid the horror and loss of war, she finds moving and often marvelous human stories of people from all walks of life. She ends her narrative with the bittersweet return of peasant refugees to their war-ravaged Andean villages.

Among the people we meet are Victor Cordova, the leader of a village peasant patrol who finds that winning dignity from the authorities comes at the price of losing an infant son, and the enigmatic Alberto Fujimori, who appeared from nowhere to win Peru's presidency in 1990.

In one of the book's most provocative chapters, the author explores why so many Peruvian women felt compelled to join the murderous Shining Path. She portrays them not as terrorist cutouts, but as human beings who have made hard choices about life, politics, and the possibility of change.

"This is a compelling memoir of Peru and a rich and persuasive analysis of the Shining Path movement. Kirk's deeply sympathetic and unsentimental approach to individuals in moments ofdistress, defeat, confrontation, and discovery give this book broad appeal. A first-rate book". -- Philip Bennett, Foreign Editor, Boston Globe

"The Monkey's Paw is outstanding. Kirk is a magnificent writer and is very knowledgeable about Peruvian politics and society. Once I had started, I found the book very hard to put down". -- Cynthia McClintock, George Washington University

Genres: Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

Kirk's nonfiction book about human rights heroes, Righting Wrongs: 20 human rights heroes around the world, is available from Chicago Review Press. The book won the 2022 Foreward Reviews Silver for best YA nonfiction in 2022. Kirk is the author of The Bond Trilogy: The Bond, The Hive Queen, and The Mother's Wheel. Foreward Reviews awarded The Bond its Bronze award for best YA in 2018. Kirk's other books include More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She coedits The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and is an editor of Duke University Press’s World Readers series.

Kirk is a Faculty Co-Director of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute and is a founding member of the Pauli Murray Project, an initiative of the center that seeks to use the legacy of this Durham daughter to examine the region’s past of slavery, segregation and continuing economic inequality. An author and human rights advocate, Kirk is a lecturer in Duke's Department of Cultural Anthropology.

Subscribe to her newsletter at https://robinkirk.substack.com. More of Kirk's work is available at robinkirk.com, through her Facebook Page or on Twitter at @robinkirk.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a student of Latin American History currently living in Peru, this book formed the cornerstone of what I find so fascinating, attractive, and bewildering about this country. While the bulk of the book is a great study of women´s involvement in guerrilla movements in general, and in Peru´s shining path specifically, I found myself drawn to the little moments where Kirk describes her own experiences in Lima and its outskirts: her small fights with the landlady, her adventures in the close communities of Piura and brazen trips to Ayacucho during violence. I spent much of college trying to be Kirk and this book will give you a reason why. Kirk is a great historian and writes in a way that is easy to understand and enjoy due to her journalistic background. Great read!

[Charles Bookman]

“The Monkey’s Paw” recounts Peru’s Shining Path Maoist revolutionary era through in depth interviews with those most directly affected. It emphasizes women’s stories, as women played a prominent role in the ranks of the revolutionaries; and, it is women who carry on as families are torn asunder by war. Robin Kirk took great risks traveling and reporting in the 1980s. Her book provides witness to an era and is a testament to her bravery. Read more at bookmanreader.blogspot.com.

[CheZhirCat · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a very good book just a slow reading one.

[Martha]

Peru's The Shining Path