Left Handed, a Navajo Autobiography - Hardcover

Left Handed

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Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231049463 ISBN 13: 9780231049467

Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr, 1980

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Forty years after the publication of SON OF OLD MAN HAT, Walter Dyk's classic transcription of a Navajo life history, comes the continuation of that remarkable story. The narrative of Left Handed's life beyond the age of twenty continues the work which AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST has called "still the finest single account of Navajo life and culture, and with Part II, an unrivaled personal account of the period from Fort Sumner to modern times." LEFT HANDED is unique in its richness of detail. As Fred Eggan notes in his foreword, "The present volume covers only three years in the life of Left Handed, but these three years, at the end of the 1880s, are presented in an almost day-by-day account that carries the reader along irresistibly.....The narration is chronological and vivid, recording in great detail the protagonist's relations with women, in and out of marriage; the accumulation of property in sheep, cattle, and horses; the role of kinsmen and clansmen in daily life; deer hunting and its rituals; illness and curing; and the role of witchcraft in Navajo life." With its rich store of information on Navajo economic, spiritual, and social life, Left Handed's story has great significance for the study of culture and personality. But LEFT HANDED has a universal appeal: it is a detailed study of the problems of marriage found in all cultures, among all peoples. It is a compelling account of the human condition. As the eminent anthropologist Edward Sapir wrote of SON OF OLD MAN HAT, "We are in constant rapport with an intelligence in which all experiences, remote and proximate, 'trivial' and 'important', are held like waving reeds in the sensitive transparency of a brook."

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Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)

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