Don't Sleep, There are Snakes

Alright, book 11, and I'm way off pace, I know. Credit goes to the Powell's bookstore staff members for not picking any wimpy books.

So this time, I read Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. The title itself comes from a common phrase among the tribe, the Piraha tribe, that Everett lived in for more than 30 years.

So, honestly, I wasn't that jazzed about another Amazonian story. Only a few books ago I read The Lost City of Z, about long ago and current explorers in the Amazon. Obviously, this has nothing to do with either of the books itself, but it definitely brought me back to a land that I had just left.

The great thing is this: The book is a linguistic and anthropological analysis of a tribe that's basically been untouched and almost not influenced by outside cultures. This book is an exploration of a culture that is so unique, it's baffling. I was repeatedly challenged by my cultural views as a Westerner, and I enjoyed reading about Everett's findings through living with the tribe. I don't agree with everything that he came to believe, but his findings as a linguist and an anthropologist are fascinating! The amount of time and patience that it took Everett, originally coming to the Pirahas as a missionary on behalf of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is mindblowing. The Piraha language had, to the best of his knowledge, no link to any other language, so he couldn't simply translate- he had to learn everything from scratch.

The challenge for me personally was how I read the book. It isn't a novel. It isn't a biography, and it isn't a textbook. Rather, the book was like a long article combined with an autobiography- Everett isn't the focus of the book at all, but his own experiences both with the tribe and compared to his life as an American are useful for comparison. Interspersed were technical points, linguistic details that Everett thoroughly explains but that nevertheless become a bit overwhelming. If you love language like I do, great! This book was a treat (though it took time to read). But if you don't love language, this may not be that wonderful for you. The cultural aspects are also extremely important, but mostly in reference to how they affects the language.

Overall, I liked the book, I learned a lot, and I'm glad I read it. I'm challenged by nonfiction, and I appreciate that. Everett does a great job of making this interesting to most anybody, though it is obviously a predominantly an informational text.

Anyone interested? What are your thoughts?