Malintzin's Choices has probably been one of my favorites
out of what we have read throughout the semester. This is mostly likely because
of how Townsend proceeds to frame her book as a narrative history. She moves
chronologically from pre-conquest to conquest and circles the narrative around
Malintzin in an attempt to provide insight to her life through the various
contexts in which she lived in. Because of a lack of actual documentation on/from
Malintzin, Townsend utilizes ethnographic evidence to proceed to construct how
Malintzin, a woman who was a slave, proceeded to adapt to the jarring
circumstances of her world and how a woman such as she rose to a position of
power as a translator. This is done largely with Townsend explaining the
various cultural structures that were in place and how they were challenged and
morphed by the conquest and how one in her position might make certain choices
that led to her agency among strangers, both indigenous and Spaniard.
This agency that she has gained, as Townsend point out, has
resulted in her being labeled a multitude of things such as traitor and victim.
However much like the rest of the class, I would not label her either. She was
a survivor. She took the circumstances in which she was given and made the best
of them and took risks that others in similar positions might not have. Throughout
this history, I kept thinking of her as a perfect example of someone who was
consistently living within a liminal space and what that might have been like.
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