Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman
Word Count: 267
Parker Greene
From Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Nisa
" Another time we were walking together in the bush, I said, "Mommy …carry me!" She said yes, but my father told her not to. He said I was big enough to walk along by myself. Also, my mother was pregnant. He wanted to hit me, but my older brother Dau stopped him, "You've hit her so much, she's skinny! She's so thin, she's only bones. Stop treating her this way!" Then Dau picked me up and carried me on his shoulders. " (pg. 638)
Nisa and her family were apart of the !Kung tribe, which was a hunter gatherer tribe located in the Kalahari Dessert in southern Africa. Nisa is being taken off of breast feeding fairly recently but still wants to be nursed by her mother. Nisa lives in a rather harsh life environment seeing that she is raised in a hunter gatherer tribe where they have to hunt for food and live in the wilderness. At such a young age you would think that her parents would want to keep her in their shelter and protected as much as possible. However her dad is relatively abusive and harsh towards Nisa with punishments, and just making sure she understand how life is for them. I think that her brother Dau and mother are kinder to her than her father who I believe just wants Nisa to understand that she can't do certain things, but he is doing it in a way that is hard to respond to besides practically shutting down.
I agree that Nisa had a very harsh childhood. I also think that her childhood was cut very short and gets, in a way, worse as the reading went on. Being forced to marry and have sex with her husband before getting her first period, and then getting pregnant at such a young age she barely knew what was going on is definitely in no way a childhood. There was a very big culture shock and I had no idea things like this went on in some southern tribes in Africa.
ReplyDeleteNisa's childhood was remarkable and stood out largely against most stories I've heard in the book. In her culture, her people have to grow up so fast. There is little time ti have a life outside of the cycle. The things she had to endure from her family as well as terrible. Her father was very abusive but even then she was still able to endure.
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