A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca, by Andres Resendez. tells the story of  a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. The expedition went ominously wrong: Shipwrecked by a hurricane, knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, and eventually doomed by the decision to separate the men from their ships, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival.  Throughout this journey, Andres Resendez describes the challenges that Cabeza de Vaca and his party faced, their interactions with the native people, the hurricane, their challenges with navigation, and their quest to spread Roman catholicism across the New World.

The general opinion is that the central theme this book explores is the history that unfolds in the meeting of these two cultures. While the interactions between Cabeza de Vaca’s group and the native people, and their eventual enslavement, captivity, and eventual freedom are fascinating, the effect Cabeza’s time in enslavement have a very interesting effect on Cabeza. While I agree that the Spanish party venturing into The New World does so engaging into conflict with the native people, Cabeza de Vaca returns to Spain to be a proponent of the importance of peaceful interaction and contact as a policy for encounters of the Spanish with native peoples. His arduous journey alters his perception of the native people and allows him to help influence war and combat with native peoples towards a more peaceful direction.

While they engaged in conflict with the Indian populations they encountered, who bore inferior and unfamiliar weapons ( bows and arrows) to theirs, and unfamiliar methods of warfare too, and lost many men to these conflicts, it is important to understand and focus on the longer term evolution of this conflict and its progression into enslavement, and finally integration as healers. Cabeza de Vaca and the three surviving members of his party survive these conflicts and Cabeza comes to influence a pacifist approach to the Spanish interaction with these native people.

Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff, authors of They Say/ I say, propose that there most people who argue fall to 2 extremes: those who summarise too much- that they fail to give their own opinion about in a discussion, and those who summarise too little- giving only their opinion and no fact from the source material itself. Buissert summarizes intellectual opinions and sentiment on the use of the terms “creolization” and “assimilation” to describe the melding of cultures between multiple societies.

Buissert’s argument about Creolisation having been a significant phenomenon follows the directions of Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff that a writer must give his readers enough information about his subject material to enable them to make a sufficiently informed judgement of their own- independent of the writers’ own opinion. Buissert plays “the believing game” very well- almost to a fault. He with great detail, describes and cites many striking examples of creolization taking place in the Americas- in Canada between the French and the indians, in Cuba between the Spanish and the natives, in America between the indians and the british, and in Cuba, and Mexico, between the Spanish and the natives. In each case, Buissert cites the various ways in which this creolization of cultures was observable- in the evolutions of architecture- in diet and in the cultures and languages people used to communicate.

He so clearly presents the original authors’ arguments as their own that in some parts, it is difficult to hear his own voice and opinions through his writing. Paradoxically, this setting your own view aside, is a characteristic of a well written, objective summary, however, Buissert’s own opinion should retain a subtle influence in his writing. It is a fine line, and for the most part, Buissert walks it well. While I find his argument persuasive, especially his concluding saying perhaps creolization extends beyond diet, architecture, and language, but into the flora and fauna, into the ecosystem and environment itself- I fail to clearly hear his authentic voice and opinions about creolization as a phenomenon between different cultures interacting. His argument and summarisation is very objective but lacking in its being so devoid of his own clearly put personal feelings.

Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff, in They Say/ I say the writer needs to align their summarisation of a given piece of a writing, with their own opinions about it. They say the summarised ‘ “they say” needs to be in line with the writer’s “I say.” Buissert does this well to a limited extent in referencing the interactions between different cultures, but falling short in his inability to sufficiently explain his own opinions about the matter.