Malintzin’s Choices by Camilla Townsend focuses on one of the most intriguing figures of the conquest of Mexico. Malintzin, also known as La Malinche, was the daughter of a cacique, sold into slavery, and later gifted to the Spanish. Using her knowledge of multiple languages, she became Cortés’s translator and intermediary. Townsend’s work moves far beyond the sexist framing in Octavio Paz’s famous essay “The Sons of La Malinche”, offering instead a deeply nuanced portrait of a woman trying to survive and assert agency in a turbulent era.
