Random Number Lit

The next entry I pulled from the Small Works List was from what feels like the most popular list on that spreadsheet, the World Literature List 1000 to 1600. I have only pulled one other name at this point on the list but I have consistently been involved with World Lit from around this time period pretty consistently. Kadambari was on the list just before this one as well as Ki No Tsurayuki. The crazy thing is the connection between this text and Guaman Poma.    The Huarochiri Manuscript represents a strange node in the make up of this history of this time period, and also happens to be the second indigenous authored text from the same region and the exact same time period. So, let me lay this out for a second. Guaman Poma is one of the only native Incan authors in the historical record. Guaman Poma’s 1200 page letter to King Phillip III was lost for hundreds of years as it was accidentally stored in the Royal Danish Library. Guaman Poma would have written his “letter” in 1615-1616.

  I want to start this blog post by saying that I had not idea what to make of this document when I drew this name at random from the Small Works List. These names come to me completely stripped of context and I have to do some work to reassert them back into an original context. With this book, I did the most outside research to get a sense of just what I should read from this person, but then also who this person was, where and when was this book written, and what would have been thought about it at the time. I talked with several other professors about this book, one professor said that she would read this book with me which will be recorded later hopefully for a bonus video. I settled on David Frey's translation instead of Roland Williams as the Frey translation felt more user friendly to me though I ordered both from I-Share. “There he had spoken by signs. A report had been sent to Wayna Capac Inca in Cusco, saying that the first men had gone ashore, that they wore very long