Comments on: A Love Story

By: candis cotter

candis cotter — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:55:41 +0000

I enjoyed your thorough and balanced account of this unusual story. Thanks especially for linking to the other articles. I do not romanticize what Good did. The issue for me is informed consent. Did Yarima have the ability to understand where she was going and agree to it? Obviously not. What Good did seems racist and paternalistic to me, assuming he was the best judge of what her future should be. Cruel to her, and unimaginably cruel to their children who are now motherless

By: Khandaker Reaz Hossain

Khandaker Reaz Hossain — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:00:55 +0000

Really it was an interesting anthropological love story. I did not much about Yanomama tribe before I gone through that book. I collected a copy of Kenneth Good’s book from a street vendor in the New York City in 2001 and finished reading the whole book during my short stay around NYC. It must be a very normal situation to get conflict while staying long period and building close relationship with such local people in the deep Amazon. But I was confused why Mr. Napoleon Chagnon got angry about the relationship (as he was an anthropologist) and showed his bad temper on Good’s doctoral degree.

By: Gustavo A. Lopez Delgado

Gustavo A. Lopez Delgado — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:06:22 +0000

I should clarify that the crew of National Geographic documentary was hired.(the Venezuelan team of famous Radio Caracas Televisión program “Expedición” ) because they had the experience and logistics to film in Yanomami communities. I suppose that an accord was reached to give the Venezuelan broadcast rights of the documentary to RCTV in exchange for the teams work. This is the only “Expedición” program (in Spanish) that cannot be obtained in video and to obtain the program (in English) you has to go to National Geographic.

By: Gustavo A. Lopez Delgado

Gustavo A. Lopez Delgado — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:28:43 +0000

I know this history since I saw the National Geographic program on Venezuelan TV 15 years ago, I make my first internet buy on Amazon books 8 years ago to buy the Kenneth Good book because I saw a rerun of “Yanomami homecoming” on Radio Caracas TV and I keep thinking the National Geographic’s story is too ethnocentric so I NEED to know the story from another point of view. I read the book on a night (I don’t sleep that night) and since then I has been obsessed by this tale (and the opportunity of discuss tolerance of different points of view) and by the desire to tell the tale from Yarima’s standpoint to show some of current occidental culture characteristics that only can be analyzed from a foreign standpoint. I has dedicated countless hours to research on Internet about Yarima and Kenneth Good over the years, and this is the more balanced summary I had read on the net about the subject. It is too the more updated report and has some inside information that I had not read on any other source. So congratulations for a great article, very informative and made with passion for the respect to the view of others. (Sorry by my poor English, I speak Spanish and my English is the learned at high school and reading English texts).

By: Fred

Fred — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:44:46 +0000

Interesting story, Steve. I read Good’s book soon after it came out in 1991, and have occasionally wondered what became of them. I suppose this is as much as anyone will ever know. Even if this is an extreme situation, this tale brings up questions regarding the extent to which inculturation in a society other than one’s “own” is possible. It is no secret that I have thought about this quite a bit…