Yanoama: The Story of Helena Valero, a Girl Kidnapped by Amazonian Indians (Kodansha Globe) (Paperback)

by Helena Valero (Author), Ettore Biocca (Author), Luigi Cocco (Author) "I was a little girl; I was studying at the Mission of Taraqua on the Rio Uaupes..." (more)
Key Phrases: great shapuno, banana pap, most waiteri, Rio Negro, Juan Eduardo, Boundless Forest (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"[Valero] narrates her experience with...remarkable powers of observation."

Product Description
International in scope, this series of non-fiction trade paperbacks offers books that explore the lives, customs and thoughts of peoples and cultures around the world. This is the story of Helana Valero, a girl who was kidnapped by Amazonian Indians.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 354 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha America (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568361084
• ISBN-13: 978-1568361086
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #699,056 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Yanoama" speaks to cultural difference, March 8, 1999

By A Customer

This lengthy narrative, rich in detail and allegory, will benefit anyone with an interest in cross cultural thought. If we can trust Biocca's telling of Helena Valero's "displaced" life among the Yanomami, then we have with "Yanoama" something truly unparalleled. But it's virtues may pass unnoticed among the "professionally trained" in cross-cultural studies. Many anthropological texts, these days, navel-gaze through interpersonal thickets of this or that "other" modernity, extending a Western "cosmopolitanism" upon peoples who often do not share our sensibilities. Biocca's book by contrast offers a refreshingly descriptive account of the intercultural life of a young girl, age 11, who was captured by Yanomami indians, only to live with them and learn their customs, differences, and political tensions before returning to "the West" some twenty years later. Although her story is by now quite old (she was kidnapped in the 1930's), and the Yanomami now live an entirely different way of life, the reader will find Valero's "ethnographic" upbringing an essential supplement to any anthropological or philosophical understanding of Yanomami life. If you doubt the descriptive quality of this book, look no further than N. Chagnon's contemporaneous (1968) but still-celebrated "Yanomamo" to see a real straw-man depiction of these particular Brazilan and Venezualan peoples.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, November 19, 2003

By	J. head (littlteton, nh USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An incredible first hand story of a world probably gone forever. In the 1930's a White Amazon river trader's daughter is kidnapped by the Yanoama, a tribe of Amazonian Indians. This pre-teen is adopted by the tribe and assimilates into the Stone Age culture over the succeeding twenty years. The lifestyle, experiences, and culture are fascinating and bizarre. Helena Valero never forgot her roots. She eventually escaped along with one of her children to a Salesion mission. Her original white family rejected her. She lived her life doing menial work at the mission, making sure her child received an education at the mission school. She had had a hard life in the forest, beaten, and bartered, but effected her own rescue only to be rejected by her original family and told to get a job and start supporting herself and child. At the mission she was looked upon as just another native inhabitant trying to acquire western ways. I am a little suspicious of this story because there seems to be a total lack of notoriety. If a Helena Valero were to walk out of the Amazonian forest today she would be deluged with book and movie deals. I believe the truth of the story comes out in the details. The facts of her story and her intimate knowledge of tribal life seem to bear out the truth.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting comparison to other books on this subject., May 10, 1999

By A Customer

I liked this book! After reading other anthropological works that mainly concentrate on the male aspect of tribal living, this book shows the other side of the coin.