The book, “Nisa The Life and Words of a ! Kung Woman,” written by Marjorie Shostak is a culturally shocking and touching book about a woman who had gone through many struggles and horrific tragedies in her life. This book also highlights the perspective of most of the women in the society. There are many issues in this book that the people of the ! Kung tribe goes through.
Out of all the women in the tribe Shostak had made close connections with a fifty-year-old woman named Nisa. According to Shostak, “None of the women had experiences as much tragedy as Nisa…” (Shostak, 1981, p. 51). The book is written in Nisa’s point of view of her life experiences while growing up in that type of society.
Women, although still equal to men have a great responsibility of taking care of the family. In the ! Kung tribe, the sex of the child does not matter, but in certain cultures, “A mother’s influence is thought to pose a threat to her son’s masculinity or ability to attain full male status, and boys are separated from their mothers to counteract this feminizing influence (Shostak, 1981, p. 214).The only time that the boy child is being separated from the mother is when there is a ceremony called “Choma” being held for the boy around the ages of fifteen and twenty. As a result of being a hunter-gathering society, the ! Kung diet is based on what they can find in their surroundings.
The women and children of the village handle food gathering consisting of mongongo nut and food from the over 200 varieties of plants that grow in the region, these resources count for about 80% of the ! Kung diet. The women also hunt for small game, supplementing the diet with lizards, snakes, tortoises', birds' eggs, insects, and some small mammals.Women decide when and where to gather, just as men decide when and where to hunt. The availability of nuts and plants in the area is so stable that women pride themselves on being able to feed their families utilizing only three days per week dedicated to gathering. Men's first responsibility was to bring in meat. Typical game that is available includes wildebeest, gemsbok, and giraffe.
Some game are more common than others in certain times of the year. When game is brought into the village, every part of the animal is used: hides for blankets, bones for marrow and tools.These items can be used as gifts to distribute throughout the community. The ! Kung community is based on gift-giving even though there is no importance on material pileup, with gifts being exchanged even years after the fact. As the o receivers of gifts, the women are in charge of caring for the items as well as maintaining them. In their culture, a large focus is also placed on reciprocity and sharing of resources.
Since game is uncommon and sometimes hunters must travel great distances to find food. Within the village, any meat brought in by a successful hunter is shared fairly throughout the group.Females of the ! Kung tribe go through marriage at a young age. Marriage is a sacred thing that starts when the females are very young. If a female gets married at a very young age, they would be with an older man. This is more like a “trial” marriage.
It’s called a “trial” marriage because the females of the tribe get married more than once. If they do not like the person they are with at that time, they can divorce them. Nisa speaks of her many marriages and how they worked out and why they turned out that way. Nisa was married for the first time at a very young age.
She had not even gone through menstruation yet. This is shocking because when talking about marriage at such a young age, it’s called “child marriage”. There it is just called a “trial” marriage. Marriage in America is very simple, a person usually falls in love with someone and then marries them, or if they do not find any one, some parents make an arranged marriage or “blind dates” so they could get married sooner. Marriage in America is varied because of the different culture, but the only way it is different from the ! Kung tribal culture is that no one gets married at such a young age.
Most marriages in !Kung society are arranged by senior members of the kinship group. Marriages are common between cousins, but it becomes difficult due to a complicated naming system. Sometimes cousins are named as siblings, removing them as a choice in marriage. In many societies birth is viewed in so many different ways but for the ! Kung birth is generally not considered to be a big issue. No real preparation is done, a woman who is about to give birth will use her mother or an elder aunt for comfort, and go back to her daily routine within the hour. After the birth, the child will receive love from the village.
During drought conditions, fertility of the women is generally low. For those children that still happen to be born under severe drought conditions the mother will quietly end the child's life to save the child from severe and certain future suffering. An accepted behavior known as infanticide, it ends the reality of living in a harsh climate and that in their environment it is more of a risk to spend resource on a newborn that is likely not to survive. In many societies this would seem horrifying but in their society it is all about survival and what it takes to survive.
They don’t have the luxury resources like we have here in America. The spiritual world is a part of all aspects of ! Kung life, determining health, death, and the amount of food and water. They believe that misfortune, death, or sickness can be directed at a person from an invisible arrows shot by spirits, but that if they can influence the spirits and stop the arrows, they can stop bad things from happening. The healing dance is an attempt by the healers to stop or remove the invisible arrows causing the problem. The healers dance around a fire until their concentration puts them into a trance state.
They believe this activates a powerful force. When they reach the trance state, they are able to ritually heal everyone sitting around the fire. Both men and women can become healers by going through an apprenticeship with an experienced healer. Showing that a women could have that much power in a tribe is just another example of an egalitarian society. !Kung women's clapping and singing influence the power and the healers are able to activate, they also protect the healers from hurting themselves when they are in a trance.The ! Kung culture provides an interesting look into a tough way of life.
Before agriculture changed the way that people settled into areas, foraging was an important means of survival. Because the ! Kung are one of the last known hunter-gathering societies, they became a focus for Marjorie Shostak. Shostak was also extremely interested in learning about the women out of her normal environment. Learning about women in other cultures contributes to our understanding by showing how women can adapt to their environment.
