excerpt from Ettore Biocca’s Yanoama - The Story of Helena #Valero, a Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians, 1996 #Yanomamo
on 02026-05-29book Tove K.’s #review of Ettore Biocca’s Yanoama - The Story of Helena #Valero, a Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians, 1996. “Anthropology has been bad at capturing the living conditions of women. A kidnapped woman who returned to civilization was the exception.” #Yanomamo
“One of the most important anthropologists of the 20th century was a dirt-poor mestizo woman called Helena Valero. After having read the one and only book in English about her, I’m convinced of that. Her insights into a primitive society is worth more than that of the vast majority of anthropologists, for one simple reason: Helena was there for real, as a member of those societies. She didn’t only study stone age life. She lived it. For two decades, she lived among the Yanomamö horticulturalists of the Amazonas, after having been kidnapped at the age of 11, in 1937.”
on 02026-05-29