I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

This book, an angry diatribe against European landowners who terrorize Guatemalen peasants, is fabricated out of whole cloth. Her father was an avarage landowning farmer whose only disputes over land were with his relatives. Her brother never starved to death. Evil white people never raped her mother, nor attacked her father and brother. In fact, she went to middle class boarding schools run by the Catholic church and other "Western" folks. For the people who claim that these lies aren't all that important to worry about, I ask you: Why did she have to lie? If the story of Guatemala truly is evil Europeans versus Mayan Guatemalan peasants, why not just write about that? I have no relation to the people she falsely accuses of murder inher faux autobiography, but I'm pretty sure that constitutes libel. All anyone wants to hear is that evil white people go around the world oppressing "people of color". Apparently you can even win a Nobel Prize, if you tell that story in a book, whether utter fabrication or 100 percent true. People who love to hear that narrative will no doubt not even care that a middle class woman has BS'ed her way to a Nobel Prize.

This book has proven to be a ludicrous fraud by anthropologist and Guatemalan expert David Stoll. He examined archival material and interviewed survivors of the events described by Menchu. Her book was utter chicanery from start to finish; even the liberal New York Times confirmed Stoll's research. One of Menchu's fellow Guatemalans said, "This book is one lie after another, and she knows it." Her claim to be uneducated and illiterate is bogus; she was educated in elite boarding schools run by nuns. She claimed to have worked in low wage cotton and coffee fields as a child; this never happened. She in fact came from a relatively prosperous farming family. Menchu denied the hoax, then blamed it on the translator (she dictated the book in order to bolster her claim of illiteracy.) The tapes proved that the lies were all hers. Menchu has no shame. Amazon needs to list this piece of garbage as fiction. If you want a good fantasy book, try Ursula K Le Guin. She doesn't lie to you like Menchu does

As has been described in other one-star reviews, this fiction is not a true account or documentary, as it purports to be-and thus, yet another example of the Left creating a narrative to suit its illogical and tendentious world view. (See David Stoll's Rigoberta Menchu for the definitive refutation.) That Ms. Menchu would still retain her Nobel after these revelations speaks volumes to the standards held by and political correctness found in modern Nobel Prize committees; she remains, with Yasser Arafat and Barack Obama, among the most obviously undeserving contemporary winners.

I sympathize with the people this book is about as I do all cultures, but I absolutely despise the embellished novels that supposedly chronicle the pain the people went through. In most if not all cases it is completely unnecessary and its a big let down when you find that one character is an amalgum of five different people or something like that. I found that to be the case with this novel as well as dave eggers' "What is the what" and just about every single supposedly true biography I've ever read. The first few chapters were very interesting but afterwards I literally fell asleep. I had a paper on this book due in two days and was so sick of trying to get through the whole thing that I just had to wing it and write around what I did read. It drags on and on and on. I recommend you read something else.

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).

She won a nobel prize for this book. Unfortunately, it was proven to be a fraud when a man visiting her village asked about the historical events in the book. There was no knowledge of these events by the villagers. So, read it as a fiction but not an autobiography.

Sadly this story has been found to be a lie. The author was nothing of her writings, her family was wealthy and she was well educated. Read "I, Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans" by David Stoll. NYTimes verifies this reality. Since this book is surrounded in fiction, it is hard to understand how the author's Nobel Peace Prize has not been taken away from her.

I traveled in Guatemala and wrote a short travel article about my experience. In my research on the country I found that Menchu was discredited for having made up parts of the book.

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+

A lot of saps fell for this made-up blood libel when it came out. Some people still defend it even though it's been exposed a a fraud, because they have that strange leftist value that holds that it's OK to lie in furtherance of a greater 'truth'.