Literary Ethnography

Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman I just reread Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, after many years. I taught it in my senior capstone seminar: “Ethnographies of Gender” on Monday, and it was interesting to note how accessible it was to undergraduate students. This is a wonderfully experimental book that mixes ethnographic observations with transcriptions of one African woman telling her own life story. This book is a classic that is taught in many introductory courses in anthropology even thought Marjorie Shostak, its author, had no formal anthropological training.  Instead, she had a background in English literature. I think it is safe to say that Nisa is a great example of “literary ethnography.”

Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman

I just reread Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, after many years. I taught it in my senior capstone seminar: “Ethnographies of Gender” on Monday, and it was interesting to note how accessible it was to undergraduate students. This is a wonderfully experimental book that mixes ethnographic observations with transcriptions of one African woman telling her own life story.

This book is a classic that is taught in many introductory courses in anthropology even thought Marjorie Shostak, its author, had no formal anthropological training.  Instead, she had a background in English literature.

I think it is safe to say that Nisa is a great example of “literary ethnography.”

1 year ago

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