I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

click here for more details, find new or used items	Rigoberta Menchu Our price £13.30 (£14.00) New from £13.30 Used from £8.47 Pages: 252 (Paperback) Editor: Elisabeth Burgos-Debray ISBN: 0860917886 Pub: Verso Pub date: 1984-05-01 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 130196

Reader Reviews:

Does ideology need to be based on truth? (1/2 people found this helpful)

This is a fascinating book in that it raises (again) the issue of the relationship between ideology and 'truth'. This book is still a required text in many university syllabuses, despite the fact that Menchu's account is manifestly fictional. Her 'humble' illiteracy is a lie. Her father's enforced conscription is a lie. The account of the death of one brother is a lie - and the other brother described as dead is apparently alive and well. Her own contemporaries in Guatemala are mystified by her narrative. Despite these things, this book is still doing the rounds, and within the world of political correctness, particularly where the ideology of the left is being advanced, apparently truth does not need to be 'true' to be valid. In Menchu's own words, it is "her truth", a truth that does not required the real world in order to exist. Is it moving? Yes. Is it harrowing? No doubt. Will it encourage idealists to embrace the left? Sure thing. Is it true? Well that's an entirely different thing.

Moving perhaps, but all lies (1/1 people found this helpful)

Whether this book is full of lies is not a question of whether you are conservative or liberal, it is established fact. David Stoll's work, corroborated by investigation by the New York Times, has already exposed the truth. Nobody has even bothered to give a serious refutation. Read it if you want, enjoy it if you want, but it's a work of fiction. If you want to know about Guatemala, read some history books instead. The story would be fine if it weren't for the fact that Rigoberta Menchú misrepresents it as the true story of her life and uses it to claim to be a very different person from who she really is. This is particularly important to keep in mind now, as Menchú has just declared her candidacy for the presidency of Guatemala. Just because there really were death squads in Guatemala doesn't mean that a bunch of trumped up stories designed to pull on Western stereotypes about the third world are helping to bring us closer to the truth.

Want to know what suffering is really like? (8/10 people found this helpful)

I first heard of Rigoberta Menchu's story from my political science professor who admitted to me that he physically got sick while reading it. Needless to say the book made me sick as well, but mentally and emotionally not physically. The atrocities inflicted on Rigoberta's people are to the degree of which to say that it is inhuman or evil does not even come close. Having myself read the accounts of Nazi deathcamps and the Holocaust I found this even more disturbing. The struggle of Menchu's people to overcome the oppression from the Guatemalan government seems an arduous, almost impossible one. If one has the stomach for it this book is as real as it gets, giving a first hand account of a simple people being slaughtered by a government that treats it's own people worse than dogs. Hardly a "Marxist" rambling like some have labled it- a must read.

Idiotic Marxist garbage (2/12 people found this helpful)

If you really want to waste your time and energy reading whining, overhyped Marxist ranting by a demonstrated liar, try reading "It Takes a Village" and avoid this insipid work. Pathetic drivel. Even in the intellectually vacuous world of the politically correct, this book stands out for its shameless hucksterism.

A worthless and dishonest fable (3/11 people found this helpful)

I have no doubt, as the previous reviewer enjoins us to consider, that Spanish is a beautiful language. Unfortunately a pack of lies remains a pack of lies even in its original language.

This book comprises various claims that certain things happened to, and were experienced by, Miss Menchu. Those claims are false. Miss Menchu is a liar. Disgracefully, she accepted a Nobel Prize while knowing perfectly well that she had perpetrated a hoax. If she had a shred of decency and honesty she would hang her head in shame and return the prize money. The issue is as simple and as categoric as that.

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