TESTEMONIO

TESTEMONIO

    Testimonio is generally defined as a first-person narration of socially significant experiences in which the narrative voice is that of a typical or extraordinary witness or protagonist who metonymically represents others who have lived through similar situations and who have rarely given written expression to them.

.Examples <Biography of a Runaway Slave 

Miguel Barnet

Nick Hill, tr.

This is arguably where the testimonial novel was born. Barnet, an anthropologist, interviewed Esteban Montejo in his 103rd year, a man who had lived in Cuba both as a slave and a fugitive slave and who fought in the island’s War of Independence against Spain. The resulting book didn’t fit easily into any existing category of literature or anthropology and came to be known as testimonio.

Rigoberta Menchú 

Ann Wright, tr.

Doubtless the best-known and also most-contested example of testimonio, this work conveys the harrowing facts of being indigenous in Guatemala. A point of entry into testimonial narrative, it is also worth returning to, as it suggests several stories at once—including how the testimonial novel can be riven in two, with the story told by the speaker and the one rendered a text by another ultimately incompatible. The famous controversy that looms over this work, pitting Menchú’s memory against a few facts dug up by a dogged anthropologist, should not distract the reader.