Book review on Song of the Hummingbird Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Book review on Song of the Hummingbird - Essay Example The location is in Mexico, and she wants to see somebody who can act as her confessor. â€Å"Song of the Hummingbird† is a novel by Graciela Limon that was written in 1996, and the main purpose of writing this novel was to tell the ‘actual’ story of the fall of Aztecs where Spaniard and Cortes were the conquerors. One version of the history is told the rulers of the country while its other version is told by an old lady (Hummingbird) of the nation in the form of a confession. The old lady is pretty intelligent and she chooses to make a confession before a confessor and starts telling the story of the cruelties, suppression, and brutality of the rulers as well as the actual tactics that were adopted to convert the inhabitants of the nation to Christianity. Huitzitzilin (Hummingbird) is actually a noble lady and is Aztec by birth. It was her twentieth year of age when the Spanish armies entered their country. She was caught by â€Å"awe caused by those bearded white men†. Later on, just like many other patriots of her nation, the feeling of anger possessed her mind, and led her to believe it to be the â€Å"end of civilization†. A princess is, thus, converted into a concubine (mistress who is sexually exploited by her master). She relates the confession or the historical events to the father who is deeply involved in hearing the story and becomes a source of imparting the actual events of history that are contrary to the incidents that are written in books. Father, Benita Lara, had actually come to take her confession and to convert her whereas she was pretty clever and a lot more intelligent than her contemporaries. She wanted to tell the exact socio-political cruelties that had lingered on her people and the brutality that was thrust upon them by the rulers. So, she chooses an odd way of telling history and, towards the end of the confession, she was able to convey her mind to the