Book Review: Wisdom Sits In Places By Keith Basso

Heritage and tradition are often tied together inaccurately with assumptions that the two words are proportionate to each other, however, heritage of a family is what inspires and conceives traditions. In the story ‘Two Kinds’ by Amy Tan, she goes into depth about how strong family heritage lead her to be unique in a new world of exploration. In the story Jing-mei explains the stress of overcoming disliked aspects of heritage, “If felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good” (Tan 231). A strong understanding of family values will allow alteration for the benefit of other family members and future generations. Expressing how simple things can infringe on a person's own characteristics in ‘By Any Other Name’ the narrator says, “If one’s name is changed, one develops a curious form of dual personality” (Rau 44).

There are moments where our surroundings bring out certain emotions in us, sometimes impacting the way we live and view life. Robert Butler portrays this use of setting in the story "Christmas 1910" through the life of a girl named Abigail. All throughout this piece, the author is symbolizing how the country setting is affecting Abigails life, conveying loneliness and feeling disconnected with the outside world.

Robert Frost's 'Desert Places' is a testament to the harrowing nature of solidarity. By subjecting the narrator to the final moments of daylight on a snowy evening, an understanding about the nature of blank spaces and emptiness becomes guratively

There is a place where not far from my hometown, which, since my childhood, still holds the secrets to life. It was a place where we were free. Free to do whatever we wanted to do, say whatever we wanted to say, it was our place, our river. It was a simple place, no paved or asphalt roads for the commotion of busy traffic, no tall buildings to block out the sunlight, no sense of time to feel rushed or anxious, no effects from the outside world. It was a beach on the coast of Lake Sakakawea called “Little Egypt.”

The short story of ‘Martha, Martha’ (2005) is able to illustrate the theme of ‘cultural encounters’ by following the life of Martha Penk. The timescale of the plot is assumed to be pinpointed to the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in 2001, although, this is not mentioned directly; we are able to see subtle hints throughout the book. We are also able to conceive brief clues on how society has developed in terms of cross-cultural behaviours between the public. This essay looks at how Smith is able to convey cultural encounters through the usage of tone, verbal communication and performance of individual characters in her work.

We hear of her moving to New York to escape her life as a child bride after being orphaned at a young age. This story allows the audience to gain a sense of sympathy for Holly, and enhances the pathos of the story. This pathos puts the audience into the shoes of Holly and enables them to understand the reasoning behind her escape. The use of language features like pathos and literary allusion allow the authors of both texts to convey the theme of escapism.

In "Everyday Use," Alice Walker stresses the importance of heritage. She employs various ways to reveal many aspects of heritage that are otherwise hard to be noticed.

Setting often provides more then just a mere backdrop for the action in the story. It is probably the most important part of the putting together a story. In this story the setting is a reflection of the character as much as the town. The physical setting, time setting and cultural settings are all important parts of this short story,

Shanice Britton is a young Native American writer who grew up inside the Round Valley Indian Reservation in a small town where she knew everyone. Britton grew up learning about Native American traditions and customs. She was taught from a young age that she should always respect adults, support that tribal leaders, and have pride in her culture by keeping alive the traditions of her ancestors. Therefore, it was a little bit of a shock when she moved to Davis, California to attend the University of California. In an article that Britton wrote for Scholastic Choices, Britton recounts a comical and illustrative incident shortly after she moved there: “I was eating in a cafeteria with some other high school students, and this one girl asks me: ‘Do you live in a teepee?’” (Britton & Bianchi 2015). This anecdote is a perfect representation of some of the misconceptions or, simply, widespread lack of knowledge of the Native American population when it comes to people who are not part of that community. There are many aspects of Native American life that are not understood correctly by the general

Of all the features upon the earth there are some ascribed with special significance. These features, whether caves, lakes, deserts, outcroppings, or something else entirely, hold tremendous relevance for the groups that dwell near them. Such beliefs in the worth and importance of such sites are entrusted from one passing generation to the next. These beliefs, and the physical objects they rest upon, become increasingly vital to that group’s identity as a people. One such group is the Teton Lakota of the Sioux Nation in South Dakota, an area that has been home to them for hundreds of years and, while their entire homeland is precious to them, of particular importance are the Black Hills, or Paha Sapa as they are called in Lakota.

I am going to write a short text about the newspaper article “Native American Heritage Month”. In this text I am going to focus about how power full names can be when it comes to heritage and identity. However, I am also going to give examples from the text “Native American Heritage Month” to illustrated my thoughts. Nevertheless, I am going to connect this text with to other texts I have read in “Perspectives Magazine”.

Sense of place is a perspective of geography that can be seen in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As noted in The Human Mosaic sense of place is a term used to connote the humanistic view of geography, it seeks to understand the unique character of individual regions and places. In The Grapes of Wrath, farmers and their families are being kicked off of their land, when one family is selling all of their belongings one exclaims “This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years, are us. We can’t start again… And when the owner men told us to go, that’s us; and when the tractor hit the house, that’s us until we’re dead.” This was land was their place, they made memories there. Power and Ideology

Keith H. Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache delivers a strong message regarding human connections between place, identity, and origins in relation to the idea of place-names. Every place evokes an association to a story and/or a person/ancestor bearing a moral message that allows the Western Apache to shape their beliefs, behaviors, identities, etc. It is through this connection to the land that the Apache begin to define their understanding of their lives.

There is a deep relationship between the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two are so strong that it is embedded in their culture and history. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places expanded on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, specifically concentrating on ‘Place-names.’ When Basso first began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to ‘learn the names,’ because they held a special meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990: 54) Place-names are special names given to a specific locality where an event

The start of Lucy’s journey of introspection begins when Lucy arrives in Italy and is the stereotypical English tourist. The conventional English tourist does not care to learn about the foreign people, but he or she is infatuated with the country’s past history and art. The art and history of a country are alluring and disassociate from the stark reality that the people of the country represent. Forster resents the stereotypical English tourist from an early age when travelling with his mother to Italy. Forster conveys his distaste in A Room with a View in two methods. First, he translates “the lack of view [of Lucy and Charlotte’s initial room] as symptomatic of the [English] cultural narrow mindedness” (Sampaio 900). Both Lucy and Charlotte are arrogant when