were bits and pieces that were good/interesting, However, I didn't like the tone of the book, I felt like the author was looking for accolades for "roughing it" in rural Guatemala, She talks about her hard life having to take cold showers, for example, I never connected with her enough to care about her own experience and she seems to give herself more credit for selfsacrifice than I think is necessary.
I also wonder if some of the "facts" she is passing on about Guatemala are actual facts or just personal observations, I read this for an Intro Anthropology class and while I'm sure there was a lot of information to be gleaned from it, I came away knowing nothing about Guatemala simply because the book itself was so uninteresting and didn't engage me as a reader.
Huge gaps in time also leant to the disjointed feeling that I was left with after finishing this book,
Mainly I wanted Glittenberg to stop talking! Especially! Ending! Every! Paragraph! With! An! Exclamation! Mark! Because! Life! In! The! Villages! Was! So! INTENSE!
I feel sorry for the Indian and Ladino people given this poor ethnography based on their lives.
The prose is awful, and I find it highly unlikely that she remembers her conversations and thoughts so vividly years after the fact, I mean, I barely remember what I said half an hour ago, Spare the poor attempt at insightfulness and just write an ethnography, Capturing the cultures of rural Guatemala in a uniquely vivid manner! Glittenberg's involving account traces her work experiences in highland Guatemala and her own growth as a nurse, an anthropologist, and a person becoming aware of the world community.
During her first trip she worked as an "unwelcome" visiting nurse at the famous Behrhorst Hospital, Later, she returns to Guatemala with her family to conduct a year of fieldwork in two highland townsthe Ladino town of Zaragoza and the town of Indian Power, Patzun.
Her year is
a richly colorful account of the puzzles and problems of two distinct cultures seized by poverty and oppression, Glittenberg returns once again in, during a terrible time, The terror has increased, and the population has suffered a devastating earthquake, But this time she has come back to help, to make a difference and to give help in a country where once a personal crisis was how to order a scrambled egg.
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