Nisa: the Life and Words of a !Kung Woman Free

FREE NISA: THE LIFE AND WORDS OF A !KUNG WOMAN PDF

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Nisa by Marjorie Shostak. Nisa: The Life and Words of a! Kung Woman by Marjorie Shostak. This classic paperback is available once again--and exclusively--from Harvard University Press. This book is the story of the life of Nisa, a member of the! Kung tribe of hunter-gatherers from southern Africa's Kalahari desert. Told in her own words--earthy, emotional, vivid--to Marjorie Shostaka Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breakin This classic paperback is available once again--and exclusively--from Harvard University Press. Told in her own words--earthy, emotional, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman Marjorie Shostaka Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breaking through the immense barriers of language and culture, the story is a fascinating view of a remarkable woman. Get A Copy. Paperbackpages. Published November 14th by Harvard University Press first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Nisaplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Nisa: The Life and Words of a! Kung Woman. Jan 15, Jennifer rated it it was amazing. How rare! How lucky we Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman to have this. Nisa's story was gathered just as the traditional! Kung culture was beginning to change by encroaching farmer-rancher types and Europeans. This chronicles from birth to death the! Kung life, mostly of women. What I like about this as opposed to some dry abstract is how the way they felt about their daily lives and interaction with others and their environment Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman so clearly displayed. So much of history is written from a male interpretation and while I appreciate and understand the importance of that Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, the lack of female perspective in so much of history means a one dimensional comprehension. An understanding lacking in the vibrancy of the human condition, so much so that this type Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman narrative is such a gem. I was also struck by the universality of women. For all of Western privilege, freedom and equality, the same important milestones for women are present. Also the importance of female collaboration in daily living, which we see unraveling in Western culture. An aside, but I wonder if it is related? This tendency to interpret history from a male perspective. It gives a false sense of importance to male roles, as if rearing the next generation was not as important. And while I wouldn't trade the privilege of choice, it would be good I think to balance our understanding and teaching of history through the eyes of a man with one of woman. It is a diservice to women to belittle their traditional roles, it should be exhaulted! Aug 16, Ocrema rated it it was amazing. The book was definitely great. Mar 09, Audrey rated it it was amazing. I don't usually put books I have to read for school on here but this one is a great read for anyone interested in cultures of Africa. Just finished this for one of my Anthropology courses and was astounded by Shostak's intimate portrayal of the! Kung and! Kung women in particular. The book reveals! Kung women's personal issues concerning transitioning from childhood into adulthood. Issues such as trying to find and create an identity, to coping with marriage and the responsibility that it brings I don't usually put books I have to read for school on here but this one is a great read for anyone interested in cultures of Africa. Issues such as trying Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman find and create an identity, to coping with marriage and the responsibility that it brings, to giving birth and raising children ,we see that! Kung women maintain an enduring strength throughout it all. Mostly about the life of Nisa, a! Kung women, it is through her words that we are granted intimate access to a most beautiful way of life. Breathtaking and sometimes tragic, women everywhere can relate as we see that the! Nov 29, Lgordo rated it really liked it. I really enjoyed this book because it highlights how the reader's understanding of anthropology may differ from the anthropologist's meaning. Each chapter included a summary of a topic by the author, and then Nisa's recollections about that aspect of her life. So when anthropologists say that the women are pretty equal and can choose who and when to marry, that gives you one idea. Then you see that the pressure to marry is pretty overwhelming and ever-present even though a! Kung woman can live I really enjoyed this book because it highlights how the reader's understanding of anthropology may differ from the anthropologist's Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Kung woman can live quite well as a spinsterand by the time you're up to your third "no not him" people stop caring what you think and tell you to just shut up and get married already. The sad part is that although Nisa technically could have married any of a number of men, she wound up with the most persistent and aggressive one, who also shocking, shocking also turned out to be jealous, controlling, and abusive. She eventually leaves him and he stalks her for years but doesn't dare take any action. These are the details that really bring the society to life and show that while many things are different, people are people and the important things are the same. Side point, this shows that even in a society where boys and girls are treated pretty equally for the first chunk of their lives and socialization is moderate at best, men and Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman are more aggressive and girls are more easily pushed around. This starts quite early, with Nisa describing what sounds a lot like rape at the hand of the preschool set. I found it interesting how much forced sex there was among children, and how Nisa nochalantly says that you get used to it and eventually learn to enjoy sex when you get older. It makes me wonder if this sentiment is widely felt among! Kung women or if she is especially resilient she is quite forcefuland how our social dynamic regarding sex affects our reaction to rape. Speaking of rape, she also describes several cases of marital rape, even while the anthropologist says that girls aren't usually forced before they get their period, or while they have their period. Yes, everyone thinks it's very bad that Nisa's daughter got killed by her husband accidentally for refusing sex, but Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, that is what happened, and the killer was barely punished. The author briefly addresses these homocides, and notes that the level of violence is on par with or higher than the rate in the average American large city. I'm pointing this out because anthropologists also consider the! Kung a peaceful society. Although we consider our cities peaceful too, that's because urban violence tends to concentrate in specific areas. Among the! Kung, it would be diffuse, and therefore slightly higher on a personal level. It's all relative, and it really helps to hear the first-hand account with specific details. However, the author does note that the level of beating in Nisa's accounts doesn't match what anthropologists witness, while living in the villages. And there's a pitfall in that too. After all, don't we all dramatize our stories in the retelling? And violence is the easiest drama there is. It's clear that Nisa is a dramatic ranconteur, which is what draws her and the author together. Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman: Character List | SparkNotes

Marjorie Shostak was born in Brooklyn, New York, and majored in English literature as an undergraduate. She met her future husband, Melvin Konner, at Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman College and followed him in to the Dobe region of Africa, where he was conducting doctoral research. Shostak did not train to become an anthropologist, but her move to Dobe was the first step in her creation of a text that is widely regarded as a classic in that field. Harnessing her considerable talents as a photographer and musician, Shostak began documenting the artistic output of the women of the! Kung tribe. Kung signifies a tongue click in the! Kung language. She painstakingly learned and practiced the! Kung language until she could speak it proficiently, and then set about conducting interviews with women of varying ages and experiences. Nisa, a real woman to whom Shostak has given a pseudonym, was one of those women. Shostak conducted fifteen interviews with Nisa during that first trip to Dobe, then followed up during a second trip in —, which enabled her to observe the increasingly sedentary and settled Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman of the once entirely independent! Kung people. Kung Woman Several years after publishing this book, Shostak was diagnosed with breast cancer. She returned Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman Africa in for follow-up interviews and had nearly completed Return to Nisa when she died in Her husband and two friends finished the manuscript, which was published in Nisa is unusual among canonical anthropological texts in that its primary focus is a single person. Shostak sets Nisa against a vivid background of village life, domestic responsibilities, and family obligations, and she takes pains to show that Nisa, though in possession of superlative storytelling abilities and very much her own person, is representative of! Kung women in Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. She has such a Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman personality, such profoundly tragic life experiences, and such a strong command of her own stories that the text takes on all the qualities of a classic work of fiction with a riveting and charismatic heroine or of a frank autobiography. Nisa is a natural storyteller, and her narrative unravels seamlessly, with little to no prompting or direction from Shostak at least not that the readers can see. Kung life. Given her training in English literature, Shostak is perhaps an unlikely or even an amateur anthropologist, but she is nevertheless an effective one. She is finely attuned to the nuances of her new tongue and examines its cadences just as closely as she analyzes its content. She admits to being very much taken in by the expressiveness and beauty of the! Kung language, which is often repetitive in its phrasings and metaphorical in content. Kung life, nor were Shostak and her husband the first anthropologists to make contact with the! Previous visitors to the region had already laid some groundwork for Shostak in terms of the! Shostak writes in Nisa that she read through a great many findings of prior expeditions before arriving in Dobe and that none of them satisfied her curiosity about the inner lives, emotions, hopes, and fears of the! She also confesses to being motivated in her desire to study! Nisatherefore, belongs not only to the canon of anthropological texts but also to the realm of feminist literature. Though the! Kung men do dominate in many ways, Shostak positions Nisa and her fellow! Election Day is November 3rd! Make sure your voice is heard. Themes Motifs Symbols Key Facts. Important Quotations Explained. Further Study Context. Next section Context Quick Quiz. Test your knowledge Take the Context Quick Quiz. Popular pages: Nisa: The Life and Words of a! Kung Woman. Take a Study Break. [PDF] Nisa The Life And Words Of A Kung Woman | Download Full eBooks f

Nisa opens with an introduction by Shostak, detailing her own preparations and expectations for her first trip to the Dobe region of Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, in northwest Botswana and at the edge of the Kalahari Desert. The Khoisan are considered by biologists to be distinct from black Africans, with fair skin, high cheekbones, and an average height of only about five feet. Shostak narrates from a position in the present, reflecting back on her experiences in Africa. Nisa, too, tells her stories in the past tense. In the introduction, Shostak says that her motivation for coming to Africa was primarily to learn about the internal lives of the! Kung people, whose more easily discernable qualities such as diet, life cycle, and demographics had already been studied by other anthropologists for years. She and her husband join in the ongoing research, Shostak feeling particularly inclined to study the women of the! Kung tribe. She learns the language and interviews a number of women, but it is Nisa who captures her attention most. The rest of the book is divided into fifteen chapters, one for each of the interviews Shostak has with Nisa during her first Dobe visit, plus an epilogue. Each chapter opens with an overview by Shostak on the topic, theme, stage of life, or experience Nisa is about to narrate. In these introductions, Shostak draws from interviews with other! Kung men and women, work done by other anthropologists, her Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman observations and analyses, and historical and geographical contexts. In Chapter 2, Nisa recalls growing up with her brother, playing with him, experiencing sibling hatred, and protecting him from harm. In Chapter 3, Nisa describes the life of a hunter-gatherer, hunting prey, celebrating the arrival of meat in the village, gathering roots and bulbs, experiencing thirst in times of drought, and gorging on caterpillars in times of rain. She notes that parents and children sleep in the same hut, so that the children become aware of what their parents are doing when they move under the blankets. In Chapter 5, Nisa tells Shostak about her first two marriages, one to a man named Bo, the other to a man named Tsaa. Kung society. Nisa also describes her feelings of love for a man named Kantla, who is already married and who invites her to be a co-wife, an offer that Nisa refuses. In Chapter 6, Nisa enters her first long marriage, to a man named Tashay. She and Tashay grow to love each other. Early in their marriage, Nisa experiences her first menstruation, and Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman women of the village enclose her in a hut and perform the ritual ceremonies that accompany that momentous event in a! Chapter 7 concerns the infrequent though not uncommon practice of adopting a co- wife. Nisa tells of her own brief experience with a co-wife Tashay brings to the hut. Before long, Nisa drives the co-wife away and the marriage resumes as normal. Nisa takes on several lovers, as is common in! Kung society, and when she becomes pregnant, as recounted in Chapter 8, her husband gets very jealous. Nisa gives birth to a baby girl, Chuko, who dies in infancy. In Chapter 9, Nisa describes her four subsequent pregnancies. She has a baby girl, Nai, then miscarries, then has another girl who dies young, and then has a son, Kxau. Nisa then discusses her marriage to a Tswana man named Besa, as well as the complications of her several love affairs with other men. Soon after, her mother dies, and Nisa herself falls ill but is cured by her elder brother, Dau, who is a healer. Nisa begins working in the house of a European woman who lives near their village. She also explains to Shostak that the! Chapter 13 deals with the! Kung belief in the spirit world and, in particular, with the role spirits are thought to play in illness and healing. She also tells Shostak about how her mother taught her to go into a trance and about her own once-potent capabilities as a healer. In Chapter 14, Nisa painfully recounts the deaths of her two last surviving children. Nai dies after being shoved by her husband, and Kxau succumbs to serious illness after eating honey that Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman spirits have designated for the honey badger. In Chapter 15, Nisa expresses hurt over the fact that her husband no longer wants to sleep with her very often, and she says she feels she has grown ugly. She mentions that she has been through menopause and asks Shostak for medicine to bring back her menses. She also meets with Nisa and interviews her again. She finds Nisa to be calm and in good spirits, and Nisa agrees when Shostak asks if it would be all right to publish the interviews as a book. Election Day is November 3rd! Make sure your voice is heard. Themes Motifs Symbols Key Facts. Important Quotations Explained. Summary Plot Overview. Popular pages: Nisa: The Life and Words of a! Kung Woman. Take a Study Break.