While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal

by Elizabeth Enslin

Overview

Love and marriage brought American anthropologist Elizabeth Enslin to a world she never planned to make her own: a life among Brahman in-laws in a remote village in the plains of Nepal. As she faced the challenges of married life, birth, and childrearing in a foreign culture, she discovered as much about human resilience, and the capacity for courage, as she did about herself.

While the Gods Were Sleeping: A Journey Through Love and Rebellion in Nepal tells a compelling story of a woman transformed in intimate and unexpected ways. Set against the backdrop of increasing political turmoil in Nepal, Enslin’s story takes us deep into the lives of local women as they claim their rightful place in society—and make their voices heard.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580055437
Publisher:	Da Capo Press
Publication date:	09/23/2014
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	789 KB

About the Author

Elizabeth Enslin grew up in Seattle and went on to earn her PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University in 1990. While a graduate student, she married into a Brahman family in the plains of Nepal. Inspired by local women, especially her mother-in-law, she researched women’s organizing, poetics, politics, and agroecology. Her academic essay, "Beyond Writing: Feminist Practice and the Limits of Ethnography," still inspires conversations about feminism and the ethics of research and activism.

Enslin returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 and earned her living as a high school and college teacher, a grant writer, and an independent consultant. She has published creative nonfiction and poetry in The Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, The High Desert Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Opium Magazine, and In Posse Review and received an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Oregon Arts Commission and an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize.

She currently lives in a strawbale house in the canyon country of northeastern Oregon, where she raises garlic, pigs, and yaks. While the Gods Were Sleeping is her first book. Learn more at elizabethenslin.com.

Table of Contents

Base Camp 1

Part I

Not India 13

A Long Night 33

Fog 51

Kin 63

Part II

Ripe Mangos 77

Bikas 101

Harvest 123

Literacy 135

Gatherings 147

Meeting Spaces 173

Long Live Women's Unity 197

Part III

The News 211

On Tape 221

Life Stories 229

Scandal 241

Bringing the Bride In 251

Multiparty 257

Elections 265

Natural Births 271

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2014
Anthropologist Enslin met her Nepali husband, Pramod, in the 1980s when they were both students at Stanford University. The book begins with their son's birth in Nepal, an event that immediately illustrates the vast differences between life in Nepal and the United States. Since the author was studying cultural anthropology, she decided to use her family life and experience as her research. Pramod was from a Brahman family, which further enabled Enslin to conduct in-depth investigations since Brahman is the highest caste. Despite appealing descriptions ("Like beads off a cheap necklace the ramshackle buildings lined the muddy highway"), Enslin's writing is sometimes disjointed, difficult to follow, and even crude. But it is fascinating to hear about life in this less well-known country. Most moving is the influence the author, her husband, and his family had on the local women, inspiring them to stand up for their rights (including not being abused by their husbands). The women eventually succeeded in creating their own space where they could meet for discussion, education, and simply to get away from home. VERDICT There are few books about Nepal, and this is a solid choice (despite its shortcomings) for a look at a relatively closed society.—Susan G. Baird, formerly with Oak Lawn P.L., IL

Library Journal

"I am fascinated and haunted by Elizabeth Enslin's story. It will stay with you and won't let you go."
—Luis Alberto Urrea, bestselling author of Into the Beautiful North and The Hummingbird's Daughter

"If this fascinating, important story doesn’t draw you into Enslin’s telling of her time in Nepal, then the beautiful, moving prose will."
—Kerry Cohen, author of Seeing Ezra

"A fascinating memoir written with such clarity and honesty that it’s like taking a years-long trip through a little-known part of Nepal, far from the glamour and tourists of Kathmandu. Enslin's story is utterly unique yet broadly representative of billions of humans in so-called marginal places all over the world caught between tradition, politics, idealism, human nature, the environment, the local economy, the decidedly mixed blessings of globalization, and the simple pleasures of food, family, and the natural world."
—Pamela Olson, author of Fast Times in Palestine

"This finely written memoir transports the reader into a society on the cusp of social and political transformation. The barriers to gender, caste, and class equality that Elizabeth Enslin reveals continue to impede Nepal’s quest for democracy today. This is an inspiring and challenging read for activists, rebels, and dreamers everywhere."
—Manjushree Thapa, author of Forget Kathmandu

"Elizabeth Enslin is a daring original, both in life and on the page. While the Gods Were Sleeping is a love story, an adventure narrative, and an anthropological study in one, written with a global awareness, free of the exoticism we associate with foreigners in Nepal. Sharply observant and full of wisdom.”
—Alden Jones, author of The Blind Masseuse

From the Publisher

2014-07-22
In her debut, memoirist and anthropologist Enslin writes of her experiences marrying a high-caste Brahman man, giving birth and living with his family on the central plains of Nepal. While earning her doctorate from Stanford University, the author altered her course after meeting Pramod, a student from Nepal. Originally slated to study African culture for her thesis, she changed her focus to India so that she and Pramod could conduct their anthropology fieldwork together. They briefly visited Nepal to meet his family and then returned to the United States to marry and finish their coursework. After her unexpected pregnancy constrained her fieldwork, Enslin shifted her focus to Nepali women's political movements. She lived with her in-laws off and on for the next eight years, and cultural differences became tantamount as she was exposed to caste distinctions. Aama, Pramod's mother, became a central figure in the author's life, telling stories, creating songs, learning to read, mediating disputes and almost running for political office. She smoothed Enslin's transition into the family and her new homeland. The author opens a window on a multigenerational rural family, showing how outside tensions and upheaval affect them. With an anthropologist's eye, she describes weddings, childbirth and women's gatherings. Her observations have been honed by years of daily chores and family intimacy, and she conveys the difficulties in fitting into her husband's home and adapting to Nepali culture while earning a doctorate and preparing for the birth of her son. "I remembered my research filtered through a haze of poor planning, pregnancy, sleeplessness, and mild postpartum depression," she writes. The author also includes a helpful glossary of Nepali words at the end of the book. An insider's view of the struggles inherent in any attempt to straddle different cultures.

Kirkus Reviews