Categories for Townsend's Book - Diana

If I had to pick four categories to characterize Malintzin’s I would pick Mesoamerica, history, culture contact, and Native American culture.  I would pick these categories because they can all be seen in the book, the story that Townsend tells, and most importantly because those categories are the ones that are highlighted to me as a reader.

The first category is Mesoamerica because in the book those are the geographical areas that it focuses on.  It is also important that aside from being a physical setting for the book it is also the location where Malintzin worked the most.

The second category is history and it falls in perfectly with this book because the story is on the history that is available of Malintzin.  Another important point is also that the book reflects the importance that Malintzin had in the history of the conquest.

The third category is culture contact because that is what made the existence of this book possible.  I say this because a very important part of this book is the impact that Malintzin made on the world by being the intermediary of this culture contact between natives and spanish.  She helped make this a culture contact rather than a more violent culture clash.

The fourth and final category is Native American culture because we read plenty of it in Townsend’s book and it is important because of the purpose it plays in the book.  Without reading and learning about Native American culture we could not understand Malintzin the way we do now.  If Townsend had not included all the detailed information about the culture Malintzin came from then it would have been harder to understand Malintzin’s choices.

In conclusion, the best categories for Townsend’s Malintzin’s Choices are Mesoamerica because it is the main physical area of focus in the book, history because the book is written about past events with significant impacts on history, culture contact because it is what allowed Malintzin to be the important figure in history that she is, and finally Native American culture because to understand Malintzin to the best of our ability we must try to understand the background that she come from.