a) What seem to you to be the most troubling aspects of
growing up an Indian in Guatemala?
b) What events seem to mark female maturation in Menchu’s
life? Is there any significance about who teaches Menchu survival
lessons?
2. "Resistance Campaign" & Gender (Menchu
115)
a)
Ethnicity: How does adversity strengthen the narrator’s sense of
ethnic identity? (108, 118, 130, 145-49)
b)
Exploitation: What factors inhibit Guatemala's poor from joining
forces together? (122-2, 140-41, 144)
c) Unification: How do they succeed in joining forces? (100,
128-29, 133-36, 145-49, 161-62)
d) Gender: In what ways is Menchu different than other girls of
the same age? (71, 94, 104, 164) Why do you think Menchu makes
this point in her narrative? (consider her Western audience)
3.
Critical Readings of Menchu
3.1 Close Readings: In what ways might what Menchu's memoir be
constructing her own fiction? Carefully consider the wording in
the quotes below. What universal truths nonetheless appear to
underline these statements?
a) "In my case, because I was a girl, my parents told me:
'You're a young woman and a woman has to be a mother.' They said I
was beginning my life as a woman and I would want many things that
I couldn't have. They tried to tell me that, whatever my
ambitions, I'd no way of achieving them. That's how life is"
(Menchu 69).
b) "My mother explained that when I started menstruating, I had
begun developing as a woman and could have children. She told me
how young women should behave, according to what is laid down in
our traditions. For example, if a young man talks to us in the
street, we have the right to insult him or ignore him, because our
ancestors say it is scandalous for a woman to start courting int
he street or do anything behind her parents' back" (Menchu 70).
c) "Then the grandparents tell us many things that they've been
witness to, things which must be passed on by their children. They
are witness that our ancestors were not sinners, they did not kill
. . . ' . . . Our forefathers told us that our old people used to
live until they were a hundred and twenty-five, and now we die at
forty or thirty. You younger people must ask yourselves why this
is so'" (Menchu 79).
d) "The parents tell the girl what most of the presents she'll be
getting when she leaves are--hens, a dog, a sheep, cooking pots.
Her mother has been making the earthenware cooking pots Indians
use for her. We never buy anything like that from the market.
Mothers always make them" (Menchu 86).
3.2 Testing the Testimony
a) Closely reread the passages about her father’s fight for his
land (ch. xv, 121-38). What specific factors and issues seem to be
the cause of the strife?
b) Closely reread those passages referring to atrocities. Is
Menchu positive the way they occurred—why or why not?
c) How would it change your reaction to the atrocities in
Guatemala if the ones Menchu did not witness the atrocities
against her family personally?
d) How might one defend Menchu against
those who assert that I,
Rigoberta Menchu is not a faithful memoir?
