Dealing With Academic Conflicts In The Classroom

I, Rigoberta Menchu As A Case Study

Abstract

Writing in 1999, the American anthropologist David Stoll challenged several important elements in Guatemalan Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu' s I, Rigoberta Menchu, a text assigned in courses in many disciplines in American colleges. 1 The controversy Stoll sparked encouraged a number of instructors to drop I, Rigoberta Menchu from their reading lists. Yet it is the controversial nature of this work which makes it suitable for my 150-student introductory course, "The World Since 1945," which meets a "cultural diversity" requirement for students at all class levels. My goal in assigning a troubling and troubled text such as I, Rigoberta Menchu in this course is to open up a dialogue. I, Rigoberta Menchu questions students, while encouraging them to pose and answer new questions, taking them to places where supporters and critics of the text (including the instructor) might never have gone.

In order to provide a context for students reading I, Rigoberta Menchu, I begin with a lecture on Guatemala in the twentieth century. I want students to relate the historical narrative I present, in which the 1954 coup is a central event, to Menchu's historical narrative, in which both the coup and the United States are largely absent. (This is not a course in Central American history in which students' immersion in the subject would allow them to explore in greater depth the context in which Menchu lived and wrote.) I divide the readings into three parts. First I have students read I, Rigoberta Menchu, without introducing Stoll's analyses, because I want students to develop their own readings of her text. Then we tum to Stoll's study and the debate it has generated, and conclude with passages from Menchu's later Crossing Borders.