Nisa

A detailed Summary of Nisa

In this paper I am going to discuss the book Nisa The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, by Marjorie Shostak. In doing this I will describe the culture of the !Kung people, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa. Then I will go on with telling about their sociocultural systems that I have read about in this book. To rap things up I will tell my prediction where the !Kung population is headed into the future. I will use explanations from the book to help me describe my prediction.

!Kung culture is a very simple culture. The norms in this society are hard to define; norms are shared rules that define how people are supposed to behave under certain circumstances. Take marriage for example In the book Nisa explains how a women can marry more than once in her lifetime, a !Kung girl is actually married several times before she stays with one man. These appeared to me as trial marriages, the women are too young to want the marriage and usually are the ones to end it. Even after long marriage involving children things such as death and divorce/ separation occur and a woman finds a new husband. So as you can see the norms in the !Kung culture are much different than that of our own norms.

Even when marriage is involved the idea of h

The religious trance dances are taken very seriously, and religion is a large part of !Kung culture. In some cases it is a matter of life and death. Both men and women have the chance to become a healer and enter trance. When you first learn how to go into a trance a drug is taken to induce trance. Women feel that this is very painful and in turn don't want to become healers. Also it is considered bad for you to trance while you are either pregnant or breast-feeding, which makes it difficult for women to be healers. But they still do it and can if they want to. Most trance dances are healing ones and last anywhere from one to five days. They report that they talk to God to ask for a person's soul back. The !Kung truly believe that this works, unless the God won't give the soul back. Then the ill person dies soon after the trance. Being a healer would be considered an achieved status, a status that results at least in part from a person's specific actions.

aving lovers was not shunned. Although some women do not engage in this act, it is a very common thing among the !Kung. The norm here is to have a lover to keep that young playful and loving attraction alive with someone, even after things have began to settle with your husband. Nisa explains, "Even my mother had lovers. I'd be with her when she met them. But my father, if he had them, I didn't know..." She recalls many situations like this, as do most !Kung children. "I remember, when I was still small, seeing my mother with one man. He met her, took her, and made love to her. I sat nearby and waited. When she came back carrying firewood, I thought, "I am going to tell!" Then I thought, "Should I tell Daddy or shouldn't I?" But when we arrived back at the village, I didn't say anything. I thought if I told, my father would kill my mother." Most children fear their father's beatings, therefore, will not tell on their mothers.

"I know how to cure people to drum-medicine songs. An elderly uncle taught me a few years ago. He struck me with spiritual medicine arrows; that's how everyone starts. Now when the drum starts sounding, "dong... dong... dong," my n/um grabs me. That's when I can cure people and make them better." As said by Nisa.

Nisa tells about the healing experience, "N/um is powerful, but it is also very tricky. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't, because God doesn't always want a sick person to get better. Sometimes he tells a healer in trance, "Today I want this sick person. Tomorrow, too. But the next day, if you try to cure her, then I will help you. I will let you have her for awhi

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1741
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels