Comparing Worker In The Cane And Tuhami

Book Reflection Paper

After reading the two books, Worker in the Cane and Tuhami, it is clear that both works focuses on specific individuals using an anthropologic view. In Tuhami, Crapanzano tell us about stories which were told by Tuhami in the North African country, Morocco. While Worker in the Cane, which is written by Mintz, scrutinizes the life of Don Taso and his life experiences and the impact of imperialism on Puerto Rico. The lives of the individuals in these two books are interesting to me and it made reading these books fun. In this paper I would look at comparing the books in terms of culture, point of view and morals learnt by the each anthropologist.

In the introduction of Tuhami, Crapanzano writes, “The subject of Tuhami’s tale is ontologically different from the subject of those tales with which we in the west are familiar. Generic differences are not simply formal differences. They are cultural constructs and reflect those most fundamental assumptions about the nature of reality, including the nature of the person and the nature of language” (Crapanzano, 7). By stating that this book would be ontologically different, Crapanzano sets a warning to his readers to keep an open mind as some ideologies and believes in this

Compared to Tuhami, Mainz adapts a more traditional approach with the writing in this book. The approach to this book was a bit more difficult than in Tuhami because Taso was very reserved in the beginning and this made things very difficult for Mintz. By telling his story to Mintz, Taso is also able to describe the Puerto Rican culture. This book focuses more on history as Taso basically tells his life story from losing his virginity at 7, to how his mum died from phenomena. Also, it is seen the Puerto Rico culture embraces cultural materialism, which is normal to this