I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala Book

If you go into this book without knowing what it is, there's sortof a plot twist halfway through that's one of the better ones I've read. It's a true story! I just didn't predict this woman's reaction to her life.

For the first half of the book, it's an oral history of a young peasant in Guatemala. She seems nice. Her life is desperate; she's poor and exploited by a racist government. She tells heartbreaking stories. Her baby brother was strapped to his mother's back as she worked on a finca (plantation). A cropdusting airplane flew over them all, as they do, scattering pesticide. The baby began to have trouble breathing. He shortly died. They were unable to bring him back to their mountain homeland, and when his body started to smell, they were forced to pay their entire family's entire season's wages for the right to bury him on the finca that murdered him.

That's sad, right? Makes you want to fight someone! And here comes the twist - and I don't think it's really intended as a twist, it's more or less described on the cover, but if you want the weird surprise I got then you should stop reading now. I'll give you a hint: Rigoberta Menchú ain't nothin' to fuck with.

What happens is that this sad teenager telling the story, around halfway through the book she's like, "So we decided to fight." All of a sudden she's describing how they built pit traps for soldiers. She practices throwing lime so that it'll go into their eyes and blind them. They organize. She - Rigoberta Menchú specifically - travels to other mountain communities, to teach them how to train their dogs to attack soldiers. They join a revolution.

And it turns out that Rigoberta Menchú is a hero of the Guatemalan Civil War, loosely between 1960 and 1996. The crucial events in this book, which turns out to be about her awakening as a revolutionary, take place in 1979. It reminds me a little of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk To Freedom, in that the author wants peace but is willing to use war to get there. Both books give pretty specific instructions on how to revolution. And both authors are winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. (Which, honestly, the Nobel dudes are basically just trolling dictators, aren't they? They're constantly giving awards to people who are not super devoted to peace. Lookin' at you too, Obama.)

I want to give what I guess is a trigger warning: you may choose to skip chapter 24, entitled "The torture and death of her little brother, burnt alive in front of members of his family and the community." (Different little brother.) The title is an accurate description of what happens. She describes everything that was done to him, and it's very bad. The idea was to intimidate the people. It doesn't work. Chapter 27 is about her mother, and it's also upsetting. This is the toughest stuff I've read since Survival in the Killing Fields from Cambodia.

I, Rigoberta Menchú was assigned reading for my incoming freshman college class, along with the mighty Nella Larsen. Liberal indoctrination: successful! And good choices, these are both legit great books. I've revisited them over the past few years and I remain impressed by the judgment of whoever made that decision.

Rigoberta Menchú ain't nothin' to fuck with and neither is this book.