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A review by darkenergy
A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick
4.0
A fascinating and decidedly personal account of anthropology. Kulick is blunt about his own feelings, spending several years of his life in Gapun, an isolated village in Papua New Guinea, after growing up in the industrialized West.
But his dislike of certain practices - and the food - doesn't stop him from providing appropriately detailed narratives of the lives of these villagers. And his willingness to admit himself as a human being allows him to depict the villagers as human beings, not as data points or carefully anonymized cases. This ends up being fundamentally important to the central thesis of the book: that the death of a language is a reflection of the death of a way of life. How can we understand why Tayap the language is going extinct if we don't see how outside contact is eroding cultural practices, less to their benefit than is assumed by the self-absorbed proponents of "Western civilization" (as if that itself weren't influenced by anything!)?
I also appreciated the way Kulick highlights the villagers' perspective with regards to the importance of preserving their language. I found he did a good job of not slipping into disdain for some of the views that we know are scientifically disproven - or when he can't hold it in, he highlights superstitious or illogical behavior in his own behavior and cultural background.
As a memoir of a vanishing place, this is absolutely worth a read.
But his dislike of certain practices - and the food - doesn't stop him from providing appropriately detailed narratives of the lives of these villagers. And his willingness to admit himself as a human being allows him to depict the villagers as human beings, not as data points or carefully anonymized cases. This ends up being fundamentally important to the central thesis of the book: that the death of a language is a reflection of the death of a way of life. How can we understand why Tayap the language is going extinct if we don't see how outside contact is eroding cultural practices, less to their benefit than is assumed by the self-absorbed proponents of "Western civilization" (as if that itself weren't influenced by anything!)?
I also appreciated the way Kulick highlights the villagers' perspective with regards to the importance of preserving their language. I found he did a good job of not slipping into disdain for some of the views that we know are scientifically disproven - or when he can't hold it in, he highlights superstitious or illogical behavior in his own behavior and cultural background.
As a memoir of a vanishing place, this is absolutely worth a read.