Customer Reviews

Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru

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I first read this book in 1990, when I was a college student. It galvanized my interest in pan-American indigenous-white relations. Now that I am a university professor myself, I teach this book regularly. It's fascinating to most undergraduates -- often mentioned as one of their favorite books of the semester -- without losing any of the intricacy and delicacy of argument necessary to treating the subject of cultural contact and conflict in the Americas. I highly recommend it for any reader; I've given it to people travelling to Peru on vacation and it has greatly deepened their understanding of the land they are visiting and history of their own presence in the Sacred Valley. A great read, highly informative, elegantly written and deeply researched.

Irene Silverblatt examines the effects of the Spanish conquest on women's place in Peruvian society. In a straightforward and uncomplicated way, Silverblatt lays out the material using a basic `before and after' approach. She spends the first half describing pre-conquest Andean life, concentrating on women and their roles in society. Then she shows how life changed for the Andeans after the arrival of the Spanish. Again, she focuses on how those changes affected women, arguing that not only were women affected by the Spanish conquest but that they suffered far greater loss of position than their male counterparts.

She just keeps repeating herself. Read like a couple chapters, and you pretty much got it. All the Gods and Goddesses parts are very repetitive.

This book is a extreamly verbous book that discusses the political and economic rights of andean women through out history.