Webb, Chapter 7- Testimonial, Autoethnography, and the Future of English

I've taught I, Rigoberta Menchu, here are WMU (in my English 1100 class). It was my first time teaching the text and I remember being disappointed that my students didn't have the same reaction to the text that I was expecting. Their overall disposition can only be described as apathetic. I couldn't believe that anyone reading about Menchu's travails in Guatemala wouldn't be moved to tears and want to know more. That was the reaction I had had. Why didn't my students feel the same way?

Webb mentions that students who have been desensitized to violence on television and the movies would react differently to something they read. This was not the case for this class. Is it possible that today's student are now so desensitized that even a powerful testimonial like I, Rigoberta Menchu would leave them unaffected? Perhaps it had more to do with it being the last text we read in a Spring semester, and they were just anxious for the school year to be done. Perhaps it was my approach to the text.

Despite my less than positive experience teaching this text, I still recommend it for the secondary classroom. Everything Webb says about it is true: 1) the language is very accessible, 2) the story is important one to be heard, especially by Americans with a limited view of the rest of the world, and 3) testimonials show students that every individual voice is important - and thus so are theirs. I like Webb's ideas for turning this text into a project where students collect ethnographies of their family or people in their community.

On a side note, I've also had the privilege of meeting Rigoberta Menchu in person. Because of my work with PeaceJam, I am given the rare opportunity to meet a different Nobel Peace Prize Laureate each year. Last year, Menchu came to WMU for the PeaceJam conference. In what turned out to be one of the most memorable moments in my life, I had lunch with Menchu and other members of our task force. Menchu is the definition of diminutive and she is exceedingly humble. I kept thinking that if this tiny woman was able to come from her oppressed background and change the lives of millions of Guatemalans and indigenous peoples everywhere, then truly any one of us could help change the world as well.

This is the message I would want my students to walk away with after reading her testimonial. For this reason above all others, I hope you find the opportunity to teach I, Rigoberta Menchu in your classrooms.