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A review by danvinci
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
This is an anthropological book which everyone can appreciate and enjoy - no need to be an academic here.
Following Don Kulick on this very personal journey of connecting and intertwining his life with one of the remotest tribes in Papua New Guinea (tribe,that hardly ever saw a white man before), through his day-to-day stories - often funny, often naive and amusing - one gets to get a glimpse into society and culture that we forget still exists, so remote and exotic it is. But as Don’s visits and his field notes span over the course of 30 years, they put under a stark light the reality of slow, merciless process of disappearance, “elimination” if you wish, of these authentic remote communities under an unstoppable bulldozer of westernization. As sweet, touching, mesmerizing this book is - it is also a tragic modern tale of “evolution by adaptation”, of slow transmutation and merging of diverse and unique cultures into something new, something “pidgin”, something that is no longer and not yet. Recommend!
Following Don Kulick on this very personal journey of connecting and intertwining his life with one of the remotest tribes in Papua New Guinea (tribe,that hardly ever saw a white man before), through his day-to-day stories - often funny, often naive and amusing - one gets to get a glimpse into society and culture that we forget still exists, so remote and exotic it is. But as Don’s visits and his field notes span over the course of 30 years, they put under a stark light the reality of slow, merciless process of disappearance, “elimination” if you wish, of these authentic remote communities under an unstoppable bulldozer of westernization. As sweet, touching, mesmerizing this book is - it is also a tragic modern tale of “evolution by adaptation”, of slow transmutation and merging of diverse and unique cultures into something new, something “pidgin”, something that is no longer and not yet. Recommend!