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    A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea
    A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea
    A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea
    Audiobook8 hours

    A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea

    Written by Don Kulick

    Narrated by Paul Woodson

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Renowned linguistic anthropologist Don Kulick first went to study the tiny jungle village of Gapun in New Guinea over thirty years ago to document how it was that their native language, Tayap, was dying. But you can't study a language without settling in among the people, understanding how they speak every day, and even more, how they live. This book takes us inside the village as Kulick came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a swamp, in the middle of a tropical rainforest. These are fascinating stories of what the people who live in that village eat for breakfast and how they sleep; about how villagers discipline their children, how they joke with one another, and how they swear at one another. Kulick tells us how villagers worship, how they argue, how they die. Finally, though, this is an illuminating look at the impact of white culture on the farthest reaches of the globe-and the story of why this anthropologist realized that he had to leave and give up his study of this language.

    Smart, engaging, and perceptive, A Death in the Rainforest takes listeners into a world that will soon disappear forever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 18, 2019
    ISBN9781684570157
    A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea

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    Reviews for A Death in the Rainforest

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This is an easy read about the likeable members of a tribe in Papua, New Guinea. First of all, I have to give the author props for having the gumption to head into the darkest of rainforests (the only way to reach the village of Gapun is to traverse rivers and thick forests for hours) multiple times.

      At first, the author’s statement that all Papuans not-so-secretly want to be white people was a bit off-putting. As I read further, I understood what he meant – they wanted to be successful, not necessarily turning their back on their race.

      I also marveled at the author’s dedication to learning, then transcribing Tayap, the difficult language of Gapun. There are gender-related endings to words, which confused him in the beginning, but then he was able to create a large body of work describing the grammar and vocabulary of the Gapuners. Their language is slowly being replaced by one called Tok Pisin, which is a pidgin version of English. The lamentable reason for this loss of language is that the younger generations don’t wish to learn to speak Tayap – they feel that is for old people and choose to speak Tok Pisin instead. Once the elders of the tribe pass away, so will Tayap, preserved only in the author’s memory and his comprehensive body of work. That seems poignant to me; working so hard to preserve something that is vanishing before your very eyes. The fact that this language was confined to less than 500 humans at the time of writing is mind -boggling. Another poignant thought is that while these villagers were sharing their language with the author, they were also sharing the memories of their lives. As Kulick puts it: “Today, those recordings are all that remains of their stories, songs, and explanations”.

      The author relates stories of his time in Gapun, complete with self-deprecating humor and details that will make you cringe (imagine eating grubs or maggots?) or make you smile ( an intrepid youngster dubs himself the “security” guarding the author and subsequently stays by his side zealously).

      DEATH OF A LANGUAGE is a wonderfully written book that will make you think about many things -the loss of this language, the circle of life, and the strength of this anthropologist who devoted so much of his life to these villagers.
    • 5/5
      Fascinating, and very approachable story of Kulick's anthropological studies of a remote village in Papua New Guinea. The first half focuses on his work to document their unique, and probably soon to be extinct, language. The second half focuses more on recounting stories that are culturally significant, funny, or tell us interesting practical aspects of his stays in the village. Kulick is very grounded. He doesn't aim for inspiration, or to call out a tragedy. Yet his writing is solid, and the book is compulsively readable. I read it all at once; I could not put it down. > I was surprised that a word for something as striking and lovely as a rainbow could somehow slip away from village memory … Old villagers' squabbles over the rainbow helped me to see how their inability to agree on proper Tayap was a feature of village life that was contributing to the language's demise. … In Gapun, nothing is communal, nothing is equally owned and shared by everyone. Everything—every area of land, every sago palm, every coconut palm, every mango tree, every pot, plate, ax, machete, discarded spear shaft, broken kerosene lamp, and every anything else one can think of—is owned by someone. This includes people's names and the right to bestow them, as well as knowledge of myths, songs, and curing chants. … In their own view, villagers don't "share" a language. Instead, each speaker owns his or her own version of the language. The older those speakers become, the more they regard their version as the proper one and everyone else's as a "lie." And so speakers are predisposed to not regard the loss of Tayap as particularly traumatic.> Sadly, though, she and those other women are the last generation of Tayap speakers who will have the competence to be able to tell their husbands: "Stuff your sago into the opening of your friend's prick and get a thread and sew it up so he can carry it down to his village in his balls!" After them, all that will be left is "shitty ass" and "hole."> When I lived in Gapun, I had spent a great deal of time explaining to the villagers that not all white people in the world know one another. They assumed they did. No, I would say, the countries are a lot bigger than Gapun and the surrounding villages. There are a lot of white people and we can't all know one another. It's impossible. Bill Foley was the first white person who came into Gapun since I had left fourteen years previously. The first question the villagers asked him was whether he knew me. "Sure I do," he answered cheerfully.> As far as I was ever able to tell from the way villagers talk about the world, they all—and I really do mean all of them, including the ones who have been to school and who have seen maps and maybe even globes—imagine the world to be arranged in a kind of mystic arc, starting from under the ground of Papua New Guinea, the last country, progressively curving upwards towards Belgium, which borders on Heaven, and ending in Rome, the country where the Pope lives with Jesus and his mother, Mary, and her husband, God.> The attack by rascals that left Kawri dead resulted in me abandoning my research in Papua New Guinea and not returning for almost fifteen years. The rumors that I would be robbed of everything I had at the end of my second long-term stay in 2009 led me to enlist a helicopter to pluck me out of the village like a raisin from a bun.> The villagers' caregiving practices gave me pause at first: the blithe handing over of butcher knives to grasping babies; the continual ordering to fetch this, do that; the violent threats. Over time, though, I came to see that the style of caregiving practiced by Gapun mothers resulted in exceptionally capable and competent young children.> The only people in the village I have ever observed beating a child—that is, holding the child by an arm and hitting him or her repeatedly with a straw broom, a stick, or, in one particularly egregious case, a bicycle chain that the child's father had acquired somewhere—were all men like Rafael who strongly identified as good Catholics, and who also spent a few years attending the primary school that used to exist in the neighboring village of Wongan. In my darkest moments, I sometimes think that the only practical knowledge that Christianity and Western education has given the villagers of Gapun is proficiency in how to beat their children.
    • 4/5
      As a young man, anthropologist, Don Kulick traveled to a small, very remote village in Papau New Guinea. He went to find the reason that their main language, Tayap was dying. Why it wasn't being used nor taught by the elders in the village. He would return several times over the years, some trips would last year's....He grew to like and respect many of those in this village, they even built a house for him. Of course, these villagers had few things, were rather poor and had some strange beliefs. When he first came to the village they thought he was a reincarnated, passed on member of their tribe.I enjoyed learning about this culture, the way they lived, celebrated, their past history and their new beliefs, which heralded from the few white men who had previously visited. The writing is clear, concise and there is humor and sadness as there always is in lives lived. The way they raise their children, and that I found fascinating. We learn everything about these people and there culture. The effects of colonization and their hopes for the future. They have what to me is a strange system, but for them it has worked for a very long time. It is a hard way of life in a hard climate and few live to what we consider an old age. It also taught me one thing, that I wont soon forget. In many cultures, such as this it is an insult not to eat what is prepared for one. I, though they say never say never, don't think I would have been able to eat what was presented to Kulick. In fact, some of the humor was on this subject, as he tries to get rid of food he can't eat in a way that won't offend. So, if I ever travel to a foreign country I am going to find out their food choices before my trip. He does find out why their language is dying and so much more. An interesting and enjoyable read.ARC from Netgalley.