SOURCE: Gerrard, Nicci. “No Crying.” New Statesman 108, no. 2781 (6 July 1984): 24.

In the following review, Gerrard summarizes the major thematic messages in I, Rigoberta Menchú.

We are daily faced with testimonies of appalling oppression and statistics of human rights' violations which perhaps desensitize our human and political reactions. The simple voice of Rigoberta Menchú, a young Quiché-Indian peasant who is the national leader of the Revolutionary Christian Group in her country, cuts through the distance we place between ourselves and the chorus of suffering. In her introduction to the interviews with her that make up this autobiography, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray calls her the ‘privileged witness’ who ‘refuses to let us forget.’

Rigoberta Menchú has dedicated her life to a cause, so that her personal story simultaneously unfolds the experiences of the 22 other tribes in Guatemala. In her culture, where deep religious faith and social revolt are indivisible, where ‘everything that...