9781844674589-who-is-rigoberta-menchu

Who Is Rigoberta Menchú?

Leading historian takes on the lies told about Rigoberta Menchú’s bestselling memoir.

In 1984, indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchú published a harrowing account of life under a military dictatorship in Guatemala. That autobiography—I, Rigoberta Menchú—transformed the study and understanding of modern Guatemalan history and brought its author international renown. She won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. At that point, she became the target of historians seeking to discredit her testimony and deny US complicity in the genocidal policies of the Guatemalan regime.

Told here is the story of an unlettered woman who became the spokesperson for her people and clashed with the intellectual apologists of the world’s most powerful nation. What happened to her autobiography speaks volumes about power, perception and race on the world stage. This critical companion to Menchú’s work will disabuse many readers of the lies that have been told about this courageous individual.

Paperback, 176 pages

ISBN: 9781844674589

February 2011

$26.95 / £16.99

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Greg Grandin's Guardian review of Robin Blackburn's The American Crucible and An Unfinished Revolution

Greg Grandin reviews Robin Blackburn’s latest books for the Guardian. Grandin describes Blackburn’s The American Crucible not as “the capstone of an influential career” but rather as “a catching of breath and a continuation of arguments initially made by the great original theorists of the Atlantic World system.” In this monumental new book, Blackburn explores some of the historical conceptions and misconceptions of the complex system which sustained slavery and its economy in the Americas, with a new focus on the Haitian revolution:

The centrepiece of The American Crucible is Blackburn's measured reconstruction of the chronology of the Haitian revolution and its influence on freedom movements in the United States, Spanish America and Brazil, a persuasive rebuttal of scholarly assessments that the revolution was exceptionally bloody or that its leaders instituted a new form of anti-European racism.

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