Review by Choice Review
Mukerjee, a former writer and editor for Scientific American, has written a readable historical and personal account of travels in the Andaman Islands, but the book is anthropologically naive and uninformative. Interspersed with a description of her attempts between 1995 and 2002 to meet the people of North Sentinel Island, possibly "the most isolated humans on earth," Mukerjee presents a familiarly depressing account of the tragic encounters of indigenous peoples with traders, slave dealers, convicts, poachers, and both British and Indian administrators, welfare officials, and anthropologists. There are repeated references to people who "lived in a time capsule that preserved the ways of our prehistoric ancestors" along with criticisms of the illusory benefits of progress, modernization, and the "vices of civilization." However, there is minimal analysis about the social effects of disease, kidnappings, population decimation, loss of forestland and resources, food dependency, and educational deprivation on living islanders. Mukerjee demonstrates a disappointingly meager knowledge of anthropological methods and analysis--e.g., mistakenly referring to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown as "the first university-trained anthropologist to do fieldwork--anywhere." Ultimately, the book may tell us more about Mukerjee's intellectual quest to reconstruct her own Bengali heritage than about "the land of the naked people." ^BSumming Up: Optional. Public libraries. B. Tavakolian Denison University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
For centuries the Andaman Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Burma in the Bay of Bengal, were feared as the enclaves of cannibals. The isolated and long-besieged Andamanese, who may well be descendents of early humans who settled in Australia and southeast Asia 60,000 years ago, are not man-eaters, but they are hostile to outsiders, a stance Mukerjee, a former Scientific American editor who secured a Guggenheim fellowship to study this unique world, comes to understand and respect. Engaging, erudite, and wily, Mukerjee uses the sprightly mode of travel writing with great irony as she chronicles the islands' cruel history of invasion and exploitation. Colonized by the British, occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and turned over to India in 1947, the Andamans suffered all the traumas of conquest from violence to alien diseases to environmental decimation to the loss of traditional ways of life and languages. Insightfully portraying today's islanders, Mukerjee expresses boundless admiration for their resilience, reminding readers that ancient and successful cultures can teach us a great deal about survival. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2003 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal and now a territory of India, is home to four dwindling tribes: the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa and the Sentinelese. Mukerjee, a former editor at Scientific American and a native of India, explores firsthand the devastating effects colonization and modernization have had on the island chain. Written alternately as travelogue and historical and anthropological reportage, the book moves loosely from the Great Andamanese (the most assimilated tribe) to the Sentinelese (the least), illustrating how the encroachments (first British, later Indian) made by timber harvesting; extrinsic diseases, such as measles and influenza; and global pollution have left the 500 remaining islanders destitute, dispossessed of land and, in some cases, miserably assimilated. While the author's arguments on imperialism are stale, her timing-as a witness to "a dominant culture subsum[ing] a marginal one"-provides an important case study. Mukerjee's heavy reliance on third-party historical and anthropological accounts is at times cumbersome, and she willingly admits that even her encounters with tribal members create "a synthetic situation in which [the islanders cannot] be observed living their day-to-day lives." Red tape and safety concerns prevent her from performing meticulous anthropology, and she devotes only a few pages to recent studies of Andaman language and DNA, which may make significant contributions to global genetic research. In her defense, Mukerjee is neither a biologist nor an anthropologist (she has a Ph.D. in physics), and her personal chronicle of the Andamanese is an impassioned portrait at an ancient culture on the brink of vanishing. Photos not seen by PW; 1 map. (Aug. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Formerly an editor at Scientific American, Mukerjee checks out a recently discovered aboriginal group on an island in the Bay of Bengal. Can they keep up their resistance to the modern world? (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A grim look at the history and current state of four tribes on the Andaman Islands. Former Scientific American editor Mukerjee first traveled to the Bay of Bengal in 1995 to visit the tiny islands, once a British penal colony and now part of India. Of the four tribes, the Great Andamanese are virtually decimated; the Indian government records a population of 37, the rest having fallen victim to flu, measles, and the like. The Onge, swamped with refugees from Bangladesh, number about a hundred and still attempt to follow their nomadic traditions. The Jarawa aggressively defend their remaining territory; shortly before the author's visit, they killed a pregnant settler. Neither the British nor the Indians tried to colonize the Sentinelese, who live almost completely free of outside contact. The author's interactions with the local people are fleeting in a narrative intended as a history lesson rather than an anthropological treatise. Her afternoon with the Onge reveals a dispirited people dressed in rags begging for spare change. One tribal member spoke with the author about their poverty, explaining that a welfare staff appointed by the Indian government keeps chickens, but no chickens are given to the Onge, who also receive no money for their land or the logging of their island timber. Mukerjee benefits from a chance meeting with the supposedly aggressive Jarawa and through pantomime tries to find a common ground. She notes that this meeting probably wouldn't happen with the Great Andamanese or the Onge, who would see her as a member of the ruling class only, never an equal. As Mukerjee lists the bleak contemporary conditions of the tribes, she peppers her reports with equally dismal historical documents. Tribal lands have been and still are stolen; tribe members are offered little in the way of education and are accepted--grudgingly--in only the lowest rungs of society. Well-executed portrait of four cultures soon to be extinct. (5 b&w photos, 1 map) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
