Summary

In Part 1, “Birth,” Chapter 1, Pampa Kampana finished “her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga,” the empire she had created, on the last day of her life (3). Because Bisnaga has since disappeared, her writings are its only record. Discovering her manuscript has allowed the narrator to regain entry to the past. He will attempt to offer a version of the story she wrote.

Bisnaga’s story “began in the fourteenth century” (4). When Pampa was nine years old, she watched her mother throw herself onto the king’s funeral pyre. Shortly thereafter, the goddess Pampa Kampana inhabited Pampa. The goddess told her that “a great city” would rise from the place her mother had died (8). Pampa would live for over 200 years, fighting to ensure “that no more women” were burned “and that men [considered] women in new ways” (8). She would record everything. No one would...