Week 3, Aysha Bagchi, primary source

I’ve decided to switch topics and focus on Catalina de Erauso’s book, Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World (which I briefly mentioned in class last week). The book gives an autobiographical account of Catalina’s assumption of a male identity, escape from a Spanish convent, journey to the Spanish Americas, and often violent adventures once there. I’m partly switching because it is a hugely entertaining book! It raises a lot of challenging questions, particularly because it is a rare female account of experiences in the New World (and an extraordinary story in itself). I imagine possibly discussing what her account reveals about hierarchy, religion, colonial relations, and/or gender during her time. I will probably also draw on other texts to contextualize her story. The issue that I find especially challenging at the moment is the role religion plays in the book – the Church is everpresent in Catalina’s world, and she identifies as Christian, but it has little to no effect on her attitudes about killing or colonial relations. At the end of the book, and at a very convenient moment for her (she is being hunted down for murder), she has a religious epiphany and comes to regret her past actions. In the broader context of the encounter with the New World (and many other colonial encounters that others in the class are focusing on, for that matter), the coexistence of intense religiosity and gross exploitation seem difficult to make sense of. That might be the focus of my argument, though I can also imagine focusing on either gender, racial attitudes, or hierarchies once I get deeper into the research.