Essay about Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa

While reading Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine Dettwyler, all you can think is “what if I had had to live in a culture like this?” Katherine Dettwyler is an ethnography that primarily study how children feeding and weaning customs, and continuing malnutrition directs to a higher likely hood of children being more likely to perish from life threatening childhood illnesses, for example: malaria, tetanus, diarrhea, diphtheria, kwashiorkor, marasmus and measles in Mali. She also talked about a wider array of topics ranging from culture shock, breastfeeding, population control, child care, female circumcision, women’s role in the house and communities, and the dangers of fieldwork. This novel really makes you think about what it would be like to live in a world without common knowledge of disease and how to prevent them. It also really gets your attention about the different culture customs, for example female circumcision, I feel like that would be a culture shock to any American.

Although the !Kung San of southern Africa differ greatly from the people in the west African nation of Mali, both areas share similar problems. Both suffer from diseases, illnesses, malnutrition, and having to adapt to the ever changing and advancing cultures around them. What I found to be the most significant problem that is shared between both areas is that the people suffered from a lack of education. In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa by Katherine A. Dettwyler, there is a lack of education in proper nutritional practices, taking care of children and newborns, and basic medical knowledge and practices. The Dobe Ju/’hoansi have recently started putting in schools to help children receive an education to help

Dance has always been the focal point in which Africans are able to let free through movements of emotion. In this essay I will discuss the history of African Dance and its importance to the African Culture. Also will be discussing the general information of African dance, the different types of African dance and the ones that I like the most. Dance in the African culture is something that cannot be taken advantage of in the African Culture because it holds such a strong meaningful moment at the time of any occasion.

For many around the world, the United States have become known as the country of opportunity and success. Consequently,

From the 1500s to the 1700s, African blacks, mainly from the area of West Africa (today's Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Dahomey, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Gabon) were shipped as slaves to North America, Brazil, and the West Indies. For them, local and tribal differences, and even varying cultural backgrounds, soon melded into one common concern for the suffering they all endured. Music, songs, and dances as well as remembered traditional food, helped not only to uplift them but also quite unintentionally added immeasurably to the culture around them. In the approximately 300 years that blacks have made their homes in North America, the West Indies, and Brazil, their highly honed art

Response: I found Katherine A. Dettwyler’s, Dancing Skeletons; Life and Death in West Africa very interesting though I did not like the way in which it was written. To me it was written in a very scattered brain way, similar to how a hyperactive childs diary would look like. At times when Dettwyler was trying to explain something, she would go into tangents, mostly about her own personal opinions of the topic, which ruined the mood of the book, lessened the impact of whatever she was talking about at the time and frankly, it just annoyed me. I found it difficult to understand what was trying to be said and it made it difficult to read. I think if she didn’t try to cover so much in such a small book- malnutrition, female circumcision and other random topics- I would have enjoyed it more. One thing that I did like was how she wasn’t political on her trips to Mali, she just talked to people. She didn’t preach just talk and I think that’s what helped improve these people’s lives. It was interesting but I wouldn’t read it again or recommend it like I did for the Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

In the book Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death In West Africa (published in 1994), the core argument is best shown when the author, Katherine A. Dettwyler, says on page 142, “ What is wrong with this picture?” Suddenly, it dawned on me. The children- dancing with abandon, smiles on their faces looked like dancing skeletons. They were the living embodiment of Camille Saint-Saen’s “Dance Macabre. “They were the warrior skeletons from Ray Harryhausen’s film Jason and the Argonauts-dancing, instead of fighting. They flung their arms and legs about like kindling, knees and elbows jutting out of painfully thin arms and legs like knots in the wood” (Dettwyler 142).

By going back to one’s roots, the future of developing countries resided in the “development of Africa is one of the most constructive and universally helpful missions” (Locke, 6). This direction was a form of modernization that was an improvement of relationships between African Americans and other races.

Katherine A. Dettwyler’s Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa focuses specifically on the health issues of tribes in West Africa (e.g., Mali), rather than how their gender roles differ from our own

Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, was written by Katherine A. Dettwyler. The story goes into detail about her study in Bamako, Mali, working with families and

In the period from circa 1850 to 2000, gender roles and family relations between East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are similar in that women are both eventually recognized for their value in society. However, the two differ due to the fact that East Asia has more difficulty in developing women’s rights than Sub-Saharan Africa and because women in East Asia are seen as inferior to men, while women in Sub-Saharan Africa are not.

Imagine going through life without a trajectory. Not knowing what you and your people did that did make a good impact on world history, only knowing your history as it pertains to oppression and devastation. That has been the experience of most members of the African diaspora living in the West. Knowing the reasons why our communities are dysfunctional and we are in a subservient position in society goes a long way in helping bring the change that’s necessary, but we Africans have been denied our place in history. For a long time, the perception of the history of Africa and Africa today has been through the lens of Europeans and

Family power is significant to understand how families functions as a unit. It helps the family to make important decisions about how to manage their lives, whether it financially, about where to live, educational choices, or even about leisure time, and so on. In Haiti, women play a major role in the culture. They referred to them as the “Central Pillar” They endure most of the burden of childcare, making sure that the children are well fed and healthy, and keep the house cleaned. They also work in the agriculture. They cultivated goods, carried them in their head, and walked miles to sell at the supermarket to pay for their children’s school

Upon our planet Earth as of the 21st century, one hundred ninety-five countries have formed throughout history. Within each country, a menagerie of people of all ethnicities, genders, and sexualities have emerged. Out of all these countries though, only two of which are worth speaking of: The United States of America and Malawi. Separated by nine thousand miles of ocean and land, these two countries have form a mutual beneficial bond that guarantees each a spot in the golden-age of the world. Though culturally, at at a time politically, different, America continues its relationship with The Warm Heart of Africa through thick and thin.

This chapter in Africans and Their History by Joseph Harris presents some of the roots of the stereotypes and myths about Africa in the past and for the most part are still held today. Harris discusses how the “greats” of history, geography, and literature starting a path of devaluation of Africans that writers after their time followed. Harris also denounced the language that these “greats” used to describe and talk about Africans. He asserts that this language inherently painted Africans as inferior and subhuman.