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A review by savaging
Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende
1.0
I'm just going to invite you into the argument in my head as I read this:
This book is celebrating a conquistador. Why am I reading this?
Well, but she's a poor woman who just sort of winds up here.
No, she's straight-up murdering indigenous leaders herself as part of her heroic arc.
But isn't her story a valid story to tell? She actually existed.
Sure, but in choosing to tell the story only from her mind, all the indigenous people become a faceless mass of savages. Except for the endlessly helpful woman who's her -- ahem -- "best friend."
She kind of admires her opponents.
She murders them and helps others who murder them.
She's not as bad as the other conquistadors.
I'm not interested in the line between 'bad' conquistadors and 'good' ones. It looks like bad conquistadors murder rape and pillage for money, but good conquistadors murder rape and pillage for honor.
And not that any moment in history is comparable to any other moment of history, but what would happen if someone wrote an admiring book about a female Nazi who really rose through the ranks through her own bravery and intelligence, though she sometimes felt bad about some of the crueler practices in the concentration camps she oversaw.
Oh you're making a Nazi comparison now? Look, every story admiring someone who holds more privilege than others is omitting a founding violence. Colonization and genocide aren't in the past, they're happening right now, and most books don't grapple with it. Maybe it's unfair to hold this book to those standards.
Yes. Yes and ... she's a CONQUISTADOR.
Another reviewer describes this book as "an assault against my spirit." After all my mental arguments, I think I agree with that. Every paragraph contains violence toward indigenous people, recast as banal or justifiable or at worst just sort of unfortunate. I sort of think the only meaningful way to read this book is as a horrifying tragedy dictated by a villain who thinks she's the protagonist, with the kind of irony present in The Remains of the Day. But I don't have any reason to believe it was written with that intent.
This book is celebrating a conquistador. Why am I reading this?
Well, but she's a poor woman who just sort of winds up here.
No, she's straight-up murdering indigenous leaders herself as part of her heroic arc.
But isn't her story a valid story to tell? She actually existed.
Sure, but in choosing to tell the story only from her mind, all the indigenous people become a faceless mass of savages. Except for the endlessly helpful woman who's her -- ahem -- "best friend."
She kind of admires her opponents.
She murders them and helps others who murder them.
She's not as bad as the other conquistadors.
I'm not interested in the line between 'bad' conquistadors and 'good' ones. It looks like bad conquistadors murder rape and pillage for money, but good conquistadors murder rape and pillage for honor.
And not that any moment in history is comparable to any other moment of history, but what would happen if someone wrote an admiring book about a female Nazi who really rose through the ranks through her own bravery and intelligence, though she sometimes felt bad about some of the crueler practices in the concentration camps she oversaw.
Oh you're making a Nazi comparison now? Look, every story admiring someone who holds more privilege than others is omitting a founding violence. Colonization and genocide aren't in the past, they're happening right now, and most books don't grapple with it. Maybe it's unfair to hold this book to those standards.
Yes. Yes and ... she's a CONQUISTADOR.
Another reviewer describes this book as "an assault against my spirit." After all my mental arguments, I think I agree with that. Every paragraph contains violence toward indigenous people, recast as banal or justifiable or at worst just sort of unfortunate. I sort of think the only meaningful way to read this book is as a horrifying tragedy dictated by a villain who thinks she's the protagonist, with the kind of irony present in The Remains of the Day. But I don't have any reason to believe it was written with that intent.