Assignment 2 -- Testimonial Lit and Strevilevich

Testimonial work is, obviously, work that provides a testimony. The testimony can be the firsthand account of a witness, or it can be a more fictionalized story that nonetheless testifies to the history of an actual event. The form of a testimonial work is unlimited – it can be prose, poetry, or any sort of compilation that the author sees fit to use. In this it is easy to classify Nora Strejilevich’s A Single, Numberless Death as an example of testimonial literature.
Strejilevich uses multiple literary forms in her text. Perhaps the most obvious reason her book is an example of testimonial literature is because she was one of those who were kidnapped and tortured during Argentina’s Dirty War, which is the subject of her text. However, Strejilevich’s work is not about only her own experience – it encompasses the experiences of others and so can be thought of to stand for all of those who were victimized by the Dirty War. Strejilevich includes others’ stories in a manner that makes it clear that they are not all her own, unlike the manner in which Rigoberta Menchú, in her story, I, Rigoberta Menchú, tells the story of all victimized Guatemalans as though it were her own personal history. Menchú’s story stirred controversy because the book is written as though she personally experienced all of the events it describes, but Strejilevich’s text is not all written in the same, seemingly autobiographical, way. While there are portions that are clearly autobiographical and so lend the author an authoritative tone on the matter, there are also parts that are obviously about someone else. Because of this, A Single, Numberless Death is an example of testimonial literature in that it provides a witness account of the event and also because it contains other people’s viewpoints, which may or may not be actual accounts but nonetheless all contribute to a testimony of the Dirty War.
Nora Strejilevich uses various forms of writing in her text, as is permitted with testimonial literature. With prose being the primary component of the text, Strejilevich also incorporates poetry, letters, and excerpts from articles and books. These contribute both to the sense of authority – the author clearly knew her material – and to the sense of surrealness that covers anything as horrible and widespread as the Dirty War. The various materials, along with the switches between stories and time, keep the reader suspended in a sort of horrified trance, unable to stop reading for curiosity of what might come next. Strejilevich uses the different materials much like the way Elena Poniatowska uses various mediums in her book, Massacre in Mexico. Poniatowska, like Strejilevich, uses multiple story lines, articles, and other forms of testimony in order to create a sense of the chaos that was a part of the massacre. Both authors combine various forms of testimony in order to create one larger testimony that stands for everything included within the text.
There is no doubt that Nora Strejilevich’s A Single, Numberless Death is an example of testimonial literature, as it provides a testimony of the events of the Dirty War, both from her own experience and those of others’. In order to shape the text, Strejilevich made use of various forms of literature, including prose, poetry, and excerpts from other texts. Altogether, they combine to create an exemplary example of testimonial literature.


1. If what happened to Nora happened to me, I don’t think I would be able to feel secure in the U.S. ever again. I am a person who holds grudges for a very long time, and I think that experiencing the things that Nora went through would cause most people to hold a grudge of epic proportions. I would miss my family and friends very much, but I would have to go live in Canada or somewhere else I felt was far enough from the U.S. to be disconnected from the government and far enough so that they could not keep up with what I was doing. I think that I would be too bitter and angry to lead a normal life in the U.S., and that I would be incredibly cynical about everything to do with the government or the military. I think I would still be bitter and angry living in exile, but that I would be able contain that angry enough to be able to go about with my daily life.

2. I think that we as college students are able to relate more closely with this story than other people might be able to because the people who were targeted in the Dirty War were mostly people around our age. It is similar to the way in which we are able to relate to the victims in Massacre in Mexico. The people who were attacked were mainly college students, and this adds a level of reality to the story for me because it is easy to imagine myself or the people I know as the victims. The disappeared were people who thought and acted similarly to us, and if we had lived in Argentina at that time, it could have very easily been us who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Because of the similarities between the victims and the college students of our generation, this story really hits hard and is extremely relatable.