But it didn't all happen the way she said it did, did it?
The best thing on this I've read came from http://www.suck.com/ on September 14:
"Pegging your right to represent on a scrupulous presentation of your life story can be a hazardous business... More important, it makes for a dull read. Menchu and Said's defenders claim, rightly, that any fibs on their heroes' parts don't ultimately change history. But only a dimwit would believe it wasn't Menchu's personal story that helped warm those frigid hearts in Oslo. Even if we accept her defense that she was writing a testimonio - through which one represents the group's experiences as one's own - what does that tradition mean? It means generations have judged that someone else's experience is more compelling if you tell it like it happened to you. And on that point, West and East and North and South agree. It's just that other cultures are more sophisticated. Where we waste energy discrediting our Binjamin Wilkomirskis and Jerzy Kosinskis, they simply invent a new genre for them..."
Brad DeLong