This week’s novel satisfied something that I was beginning to notice about the readings I have done for this course thus far. That is: the lack of inclusion of the Indigenous population of South and Central America. Most of the texts I have read for this course tend to make some sort of reference to the local nation or some cultural traditions. However, these mentions are often fleeting and we rarely get to delve very deep into specifics about the Indigenous communities around the stories we’ve read. I, Rigoberta Menchú definitely defies that trend, as Menchú’s life narrative fulfills that aspect of Latin America that so far had been mostly missing in this course. The unique quality of this narrative is somewhat problematic, in my opinion, in the canon of Latin American literature. As the early boom of Latin American authors came from the wealthier and whiter classes, minority and Indigenous voices were very scarce in the literary world. Then, I, Rigoberta Menchú comes out and wins a Nobel Peace Prize, and I cannot help but wonder how much this flattened rather than expanded the presence of Indigenous realities in Latin American literature. When something so genre-defining also happens to compensate for decades of neglect in a literary sense for a certain community of people, that community then comes to be defined in relation to that work. In the Translator’s Note at the beginning of the novel, Ann Wright tells us that Menchú is telling the story of every Indigenous Guatemalan. Those are fairly large shoes to fill for one woman’s story, and I was left wondering if it is now paradoxically more different for Indigenous Guatemalans to tell different kinds of stories.

Another aspect of this novel that gave me a lot to think about was the nature and ethics of its translation. The fact that Rigoberta Menchú did not actually write the text of this book is very interesting to me. Both in a symbolic way as Indigenous communities of the Americas tend to favour the oral tradition of maintaining knowledge over a written one. Therefore, we can see Elisabeth Burgos-Debray in a lot of ways as more of the author of this text. The concept of authorship and the modern novel are things deeply steeped in Western culture, so to characterize Menchú in such a way does her a disservice. Instead, she is the narrator of the text. Through her voice, we gain a window into her understanding. Something that further muddles the translation of this text is that Menchú delivered her story in Spanish, a language which she had only spoken for three years at that time. All this to say, I think that the numerous layers of translation that this text comes to us through make it difficult to judge the authenticity and intent of its creation.