Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett.✔✔✔

Another Kindle book, I read this in between my last two postings! Being the child of missionaries myself, I was interested to read this account of the author's 30 years among the Piraha ( Pronounced "pee-da-han) in the Amazonian jungle, and how his experiences with these people led him to lose his faith!

The group he represented did not actively try to convert the natives: they went to these tribes to learn their language enough so they could translate the New Testament into that language, then trusting the word of God to reach and change the lives of the readers. It didn't work - the Piraha live in the moment, and had no interest in learning about a man no one had ever seen or experienced. Everett is primarily a linguist, and his adventures in learning and de-coding their language - which is inextricably linked to their culture - was interesting enough, but I was most intrigued by the last chapter, where he recounts quite clearly his path to losing his faith.

For the rest of the book, I've copied the book jacket info:


From the book jacket
A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil. Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Pirahã in 1977—with his wife and three young children—intending to convert them. What he found was a language that defies all existing linguistic theories and reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding: The Pirahã have no counting system and no fixed terms for color. They have no concept of war or of personal property. They live entirely in the present. Everett became obsessed with their language and its cultural and linguistic implications, and with the remarkable contentment with which they live—so much so that he eventually lost his faith in the God he'd hoped to introduce to them.

Over three decades, Everett spent a total of seven years among the Pirahã and his account of this lasting sojourn is an engrossing exploration of language that questions modern linguistic theory. It is also an anthropological investigation, an adventure story, and a riveting memoir of a life profoundly affected by exposure to a different culture. Written with extraordinary acuity, sensitivity, and openness, it is fascinating from first to last, rich with unparalleled insight into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.