The indigenous life narrative and other literary (sub)genres in The Falling Sky: words of a yanomami shaman, i, rigoberta menchú: an indian woman in Guatemala and Bobbi Lee: indian rebel struggles of a native canadian woman

Abstract

Taking three narratives as a starting point: The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, I, Rigoberta Menchú: an Indian Woman in Guatemala, by Rigoberta Menchú and Elizabeth Burgos, and Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel Struggles of a Native Canadian Woman, by Lee Maracle and Don Barnett, I aim at investigating, from a comparative perspective, the specificities of the indigenous life narrative (SALLES, 2020) in contrast with other genres and subgenres (such as: ethnic life narratives, exile narratives, autoethnography and ecobiography). To reach my goal, I have used the “ethnographic turn”, that took place in the field of social sciences and has brought greater fluidity to the classification of works like the indigenous life narratives, along with the issue of literary genres as starting points to the development of my article.