Married at twelve, then separated, divorced and widowed, Nisa is the mother of four children, none of whom survived. She is strong, capable of foraging on her own in one of the world's most hostile environments, not dependent on any man for her daily sustenance and ready to talk to anyone as her equal. Wise, full of humour at the absurdities of life and courageous in the face of its defeats, she is bawdy, practical and incurably romantic. She is a woman of the !Khung people who live by means of humanity's oldest survival strategy - gathering and hunting. This book is the remarkable story of Nisa's life, told in her own words to Marjorie Shostak. It is a story full of echoes from a female past that we can never know directly. But it is also Nisa's unique story, her own voice, her own dignity. In anyone's culture, she is a remarkable woman.

Married at twelve, then separated, divorced and widowed, Nisa is the mother of four children, none of whom survived. She is strong, capable of foraging on her own in one of the world's most hostile environments, not dependent on any man for her daily sustenance and ready to talk to anyone as her equal. Wise, full of humour at the absurdities of life and courageous in the face of its defeats, she is bawdy, practical and incurably romantic. She is a woman of the !Khung people who live by means of humanity's oldest survival strategy - gathering and hunting. This book is the remarkable story of Nisa's life, told in her own words to Marjorie Shostak. It is a story full of echoes from a female past that we can never know directly. But it is also Nisa's unique story, her own voice, her own dignity. In anyone's culture, she is a remarkable woman.

The story of two women--a hunter-gatherer in Botswana and an American anthropologist--this book returns the reader to territory that Shostak wrote of in Nisa. Diagnosed with cancer and troubled by a sense of unfinished work, Shostak returned to Botswana in 1989. This book tells of her rediscovery of the !Kung people she had come to know years before.

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 Shostak, a 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.

Elliot Fratkin shares the story of his early anthropological fieldwork in Kenya in the 1970s. Using his fieldnotes and letters home to bring to life the voices of those he met, Fratkin invites the reader to experience his cross-cultural friendships with the enigmatic laibon (a diviner and healer of the Samburu and Maasai peoples) Lonyoki, his family, and the people of the nomadic community of Lukumai. Fratkin participated in the daily lives of the Ariaal livestock herders and accompanied the laibon as he performed divination and healing rituals throughout Marsabit and Samburu Districts. After Fratkin reunited Lonyoki with his son and wife, Lonyoki adopted Fratkin into his family, and Fratkin continues his close friendship with Lonyoki’s son Lembalen today. Black-and-white photographs, a guide to the characters, words, and places, and a list of suggested readings supplement the engaging narrative. Laibon is more than a memoir; it delves into nitty-gritty details of fieldwork, speaks to larger questions about ethnographic research, and provides unparalleled insight into the world of the laibon.

In his own words, Alejandro Tsakimp, a Shuar healer from Ecuador, tells of his lives and relationships, the practice of shamanism, and the many challenges and triumphs he has encountered since childhood.

"Here, the voice of Heeni, a relative of the current Maori Queen, chronicles the history of the Maori of New Zealand and the adaptations they have made to survive as a group in the modern world."--Jacket.

In this written account of his experiences as a student and devotee of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, Aravind Balasubramanya shares, with his simple, lucid, and heartfelt style of writing, captivating stories of his time with our beloved Swami. Read and bring to vivid life in the mind's eye the plays, the plots, the schemes, and the traps hatched, and the love that the author has for Swami, which the Lord reciprocated during his time as a student in Swami's school and university. Throughout Memoirs Of A Sai Student, the author reveals the labyrinth of evolution that is life, through which Swami guided him safely and moulded him into an ardent devotee of the Lord and an acclaimed speaker.

Tuhami is an illiterate Moroccan tilemaker who believes himself married to a camel-footed she-demon. A master of magic and a superb story-teller, Tuhami lives in a dank, windowless hovel near the kiln where he works. Nightly he suffers visitations from the demons and saints who haunt his life, and he seeks, with crippling ambivalence, liberation from 'A'isha Qandisha, the she-demon. In a sensitive and bold experiment in interpretive ethnography, Crapanzano presents Tuhami's bizarre account of himself and his world. In so doing, Crapanzano draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and symbolism to reflect upon the nature of reality and truth and to probe the limits of anthropology itself. Tuhami has become one of the most important and widely cited representatives of a new understanding of the whole discipline of anthropology.