Tag Archives: colonialism

Schweblin

Week 13: Fever Dream and the Contamination of Anxiety

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin was haunting to say the very least. I read the entire book in one sitting – less out of choice, and more out of an inability to ever comfortably set it down and step away. From the very start, the reader is invaded with anxieties and disorientation. We are placed in the body of Amanda, who we quickly learn knows about as much as we do in regards to what is taking place in this town. As Jon says, there is a low-level anxiety and paranoia that permeates the narrative and we are never really able to escape. There is no moment of refuge, no pause in the spiral of disturbing events to catch our breath. We are stumbling through a fever dream of horror as much as our narrator, Amanda, is. Even the cadence of the dialogue and the hazy, but simple scene descriptions were downright creepy and reminiscent of jarring horror movie moments.

The frequent references to time running out and the need for urgency, kept me constantly on my toes, terrified of what I’d read on the next page. David and Amanda exchanging innumerable hot-and-cold guesses, like “we are very close now,” “this is the moment isn’t it?,” “this is the last moment of peace” (paraphrased), kept me activated and uneasy through every page. The sense of ever-nearing doom was inescapable. The lack of any answers or context further heightened this experience. It was frustrating and almost suffocating to feel as in the dark as Amanda; I found myself feeling indignant that we (the readers) were not given more context than the narrator, it was maddening to feel so blind and uninformed.

Learning about the history behind the very real horror of the novel made me appreciate the narrative style so much more. I can only imagine that the Argentinians affected by glyphosate poisoning felt this same maddening frustration and confusion on a massive scale. The fear that environmental contamination inspires is so visceral and unmoving. Fever Dream, if inspired by real experiences, is a heartbreaking but understandable reaction to this nightmare – meaning-making in dark, magical forces, desperation for dubious cures, and enduring paranoia about everyone in sight. In this light, Fever Dream is really a beautiful, if difficult, portrayal of this very real and devastating sociopolitical issue. Like Jon, suggests generational poisoning of rural Argentina is just the painful manifestation of real, contaminating forces that continue to seep into Latin America via exploitation, colonization, and violence: “The poison was always there,” says David (169).

Question for discussion: What are your thoughts on Amanda’s increasingly heightened paranoia for Carla? There’s a moment when she believe Carla’s fallen bikini strap and overwhelming perfume were perhaps intentional, malevolent distractions. Do you think Carla had intentions to poison Amanda? What do you think became of Nina?

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Menchú

Week 10: Rigoberta’s Resistance

I feel so grateful to carry Rigoberta Menchú’s story of resistance with me. Although the events of her life are deeply painful and tragic, it feels cheap to classify her life’s story as just that, a tragedy. Rigoberta’s story is one of incredible and unyielding resistance, in every form, from the seemingly mundane to the most compelling. This is evident immediately from the introduction by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. She talks about Rigoberta’s cultural resistance practiced intentionally and thoughtfully even while making tortillas. “By resisting ladina culture, she is simply asserting her desire for ethnic individuality and cultural autonomy… Rigoberta’s refusal to use a mill to grind her maize is one example… a way of preserving the practices connected with preparing tortillas and therefore a way to prevent a whole social structure from collapsing” (xviii). Throughout Rigoberta’s testimonio, we see that resistance is an active practice, taken on by necessity. Her own survival becomes an act of resistance in itself as the profile of her community rises and her family is steadily taken from her.

Rigoberta’s many references to secrets also carry this practice of resistance. For Rigoberta’s community, secrets provide security of more than one kind: physical security from enemies, social and emotional security from violence, and cultural security from colonization. It is so simple yet so powerful in its defiance, as if saying, you may think you’ve conquered all of us, but you’ll never have this; this being Quiché traditions, customs, ceremonies, practices, or wisdom we can hardly imagine. Rigoberta’s final words in the text are monuments to this kind of resistance. As if she’s speaking directly to Burgos-Debray and her readers, it’s a chilling and unequivocal reminder that through everything, she retains her autonomy and narrative agency. “Nevertheless, I’m still keeping my Indian identity a secret. I’m still keeping secret what I think no one should know. Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets” (289).

I’m especially grateful to carry Rigoberta’s story, because, upon graduating this May, my friends and I will travel to Guatemala for two weeks. We have been planning this trip for over a year, committed to doing months of research to make ourselves aware of the cultural context we’ll be guests of. In this, I’ve learned an incredible amount about the Indigenous communities of Guatemala, which represent more of the population than non-Indigenous Guatemalans. As travelers, it’s paramount to make ourselves sensitive to the cultures we are passing through and resist treating local customs as circus spectacles when we encounter them. I’m glad I will be able to carry Rigoberta’s voice with me as I enter her home and remind myself of my responsibility to her memory and survival. Decolonization and resistance is a daily practice we must all undertake no matter where we find ourselves.

Question for discussion: Do you think Rigoberta Menchú and Elisabeth Burgos-Debray were as close as the introduction would lead us to believe? Rigoberta’s final words make us question what we’ve just read and how much we’ve been trusted to hear; it reveals that Rigoberta is much more aware and intentional about her narrative agency than Burgos-Debray may have implied.

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