Nice Girls Don’t Talk To Rastas By George Gmelch

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Anthropology 101: Reading Response 10/10/11 Nice Girls Don’t Talk to Rastas by George Gmelch 1. This story is about a college student, from America, who studied abroad in a Barbadian village. The article recalls her time where she was shunned by the villagers because of rumors that were spread about her and a Rastafarian man, named Joseph. She had to ask for help from her teacher who had to explain to her that she is in a different country, which has different norms than she is accustomed to in America. George Gmelch’s main point in the piece is to show how different our culture is from others. It really showed how hard it is to break away from what we see as right, our personal autonomy, and adopt a new set of norms to live by. No matter how old or how many times you have traveled and how many times you embraced a set of custom, you always seem to slip back into what has been set in you consciously and unconsciously. 2. The evidence that is used by the author to support the central claim are from fieldnotes taken from Johanna that expressed how adamant her house mother was in staying away from the Rastas and her explaining how bad they are. He also had conversations with two respected elders from the tribe, Ezra Cumberbatch and Randall Trotman. While Cumberbatch had very negative views about the Rastas, Trotman had a more stable view of them. You could really see how much the villagers didn’t like them, even with Cumberbatch who is a Reverend that preaches the word of god and who also lived in England for 12 years with different customs, he still had a distain for these types of people. 3. While reading this article it made me think about the how different societies are than our own. It showed how hard some habits of ours that have been with us since birth and are unintentionally stuck with us are challenged in new environments and we are

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