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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (June 2021)
By Mariah Roze · 7 posts · 65 views
By Mariah Roze · 7 posts · 65 views
last updated Feb 12, 2024 09:45AM
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Velma Wallis's Two Old Women is a short and simple story: during a famine, a tribal group of Gwich'in, one of the Athabaskan groups in Alaska, abandoned two irritable old women to die. Against all odds, they lived.
How did these two old women make it when everyone else was starving? They were helped by a daughter and grandson before being left to die: leaving a basket of babiche and gifting a hatchet. They supported each other through difficult times. Their late night conversations helped them r ...more
How did these two old women make it when everyone else was starving? They were helped by a daughter and grandson before being left to die: leaving a basket of babiche and gifting a hatchet. They supported each other through difficult times. Their late night conversations helped them r ...more
I enjoyed this, but if it wasn't for the dry writing style I would've loved it!
This is an Alaskan folktale about two old women abandoned by their tribe for their old age, and how the old women tried to challenge people's perspective of them and brave the cold winter. It gave me a good idea of the atmosphere and the tribal way of life, but the writing style was really basic and I didn't feel I was reading a folktale.
Nevertheless, it teaches a good lesson and was a fast read. ...more
This is an Alaskan folktale about two old women abandoned by their tribe for their old age, and how the old women tried to challenge people's perspective of them and brave the cold winter. It gave me a good idea of the atmosphere and the tribal way of life, but the writing style was really basic and I didn't feel I was reading a folktale.
Nevertheless, it teaches a good lesson and was a fast read. ...more
It's a rare story, so thank you Velma Wallis for that. Two Old Women definitely supports the adage: Getting old is not for wimps. Apparently the old ones were abandoned as a group survival strategy during a famine. The story mentions several times that the older women also had a reputation of complaining and not doing their share of work. My question is were they abandoned because they were old? women? or because they were complainers? They really had the cards stacked against them. I think I ca
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Shelves:
historical-fiction,
state-alaskan-history
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