"Lieutenant Nun" in Review

I'm in a class this Semester called, The Historical Imagination. It's a bit tedious, though I do understand why it's required for History majors (I have yet to declare a major).  Essentially the class is about the history of studying history.  It delves into the problem of sources and how history is perceived and how the perception of history has changed over time and to fit in different places.  I would consider the main book we read to be "Silencing The Past" by Michel-Rolph Trouillot.  Truly, the book is a textbook though it does not look like one to perceive.  If you have the Internet regularly available, you can get through the readings by Google searching every other word, but if not, you'd have to have a pretty large vocabulary or an amazing dictionary to get through the text.  Once you understand the big words, most of the points made throughout the book are well-founded and make sense.  However, most of the points made in the book are made everyday in my other history classes by the professors in a ways that are much more easy to understand; therefore, I do not really understand why the class is required if not to merely stress the point that history is not concrete.

Anyway, we were required to read a book called "Lieutenant Nun" for this week.  On the cover of the translation we were assigned, it titles the book "Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun Transvestite in the New World".  My personal understanding of the word "transvestite" is someone who identifies profoundly with two sexes or was born with both sexes.  Now, I may be wrong, so I'm going to Google it right now and put the Internet's definition for it:  a cross-dresser.  That's what the first three website blurbs told me about what a transvestite is; so I was wrong.  According to one of the blurbs, it is often confused with someone who is transsexual or transgender; perhaps that is what I was confusing it with.  Okay, so going with the Internet's definition, the modified title is correct.  However, I think that adding that word to the title makes the book seem extra statementy (I know I made that word up).  However, reading the text, the author never really seems like she's trying to make a statement; but I don't know her motives.

The book is short (it's only 77 pages) and really easy to get through because it describes action scene upon action scene.  I really did enjoy reading it because it was quick, I also found it fascinating.  What really intrigued me is that the woman was so devoid of emotion in her writing.  This is almost a masculine thing, but yet I don't even know that most men are that devoid of emotion.  The woman, Catalina de Erauso, murdered so many people, and it was as if death meant nothing to her!  It was very strange.  At one point, after she sort of accidentally murders her brother, she does briefly point out that it did pain her a lot, especially while she was hiding out in a church for a good period of time.  But other than that the only time she makes slight reference to emotion is when she speaks of discomforts she has or opinions; like when a kind woman takes her in (thinking she was a man) and tries to marry her to her dark skinned daughter.  This particular event brings up another interesting point that it would bring her little pleasure to marry an ugly girl because she wasn't her type apparently.  In a way that could be taken as a hint towards bisexuality or lesbianism, but it's hard to tell for sure and may have only been a translating issue.  I find it hard to believe that she would have been well-accepted, especially by the King of Spain and the Pope, if she professed what would be considered sexually unusual at the time, being the earlier 1600s.

Well, all in all, I really do recommend the book as a quick read to anyone.  It's interesting.  It seems so fictional for a life to be as such and sort of accepted and celebrated at the time.  I was very surprised.

Now for a bit of Astrology:

The only possible astrological sign for Catalina is Sagittarius. She desired nothing more than to travel and not be tied down.  She did not resent learning in the slightest.  She maintained the mentality that more money can always be made.  She was selfish in an unconscious way.

I don't think it's very possible, based off of her story, for her to be any other sign.  I tried to place her as maybe Taurus or Virgo, but she was too able and not attached enough to her possessions to be a Taurus and she certainly was not a people-pleaser, so she couldn't be a Virgo.