COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

The book: like The Autobiography of Malcolm X,, I, Rigoberta Menchú contains passages that a researcher can't verify actually happened. This important information tells us a lot about the nature of autobiography -- that is, that it is a person's interpretation of his or her own life. This must be especially true when, as in this case, there is a ghost writer, and the author may not have believed herself to be dictating a "history." Even if every detail "were" true, Ms. Menchú was 'reimagining herself' in the book.

Naturally, no autobiography should ever be taught as "objective truth". Dr. Stoll's research should be used to help analyze what kind of view of herself Ms. Menchú wanted to project.

If our criterion for using an autobiography were that it had to agree with a scholarly study of that person's life, then it's safe to say that no autobiography would ever be taught.

The political uses of it. When I have taught it, I used it in part to dramatize the inhuman exploitation of the Indian peoples of Central America. Though Menchú doesn't discuss the United States' role in guaranteeing this horrendous brutality and exploitation, I always provided information that made this role clear. Students were even more troubled by, and engaged in, the book when they knew about it.

Supporters of American imperialism think it "leftist" to speak about American imperialism at all! That kind of thinking, of course, is a relic of the Cold War. Imperialist exploitation of the most brutal sort imaginable is a "fact" in Central America. The normal apology for it (when it can't be successfully ignored altogether) is to smear those who oppose it as "leftists."

Supporters of American imperialism even smear Menchú as a "leftist", though she doesn't single out the U.S.! Even writers of fiction such as Manlio Argueta of El Salvador have been attacked as "leftists" for simply depicting the U.S. role in mass murder and brutality in Latin America. Clearly, in this atmosphere, anyone who deals with the truth is going to be smeared as a "leftist." This is rather an unintended compliment to "leftists" and "communists" -- to imply that they are the only ones who would ever openly discuss the U.S. role.

Menchú is no leftist, as she makes clear in the book itself, by the way.

The fact that Menchú fabricated some incidents in what she purports to be her autobiography certainly does not mean that horrendous brutality and exploitation, masterminded by the United States, does not exist in Central America. But it "does" mean that the book should not be taught as "the unvarnished truth" -- no autobiography should be.

-- Grover C. Furr, Associate Professor of English, Montclair State University (posted 1/12, 4:05 p.m., E.S.T.)

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