All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community - Book Review Essay

Chapter 5: Child Keeping

The author of this chapter talks about exchanging the children among the people in Flats apart from exchanging the food and money among other commodities. The intention of the children exchange was prudent. This is because it meant to assist each other. For example, the children were exchanged because some families wanted to have children to stay within the home. The children exchange practice also target the lives of children to be better off in the poverty condition that they lived. Exchange of children was the volunteer, and it was either temporary or permanent. It is different with the current situation where the exchange of the children is termed as child trafficking. Contrary to the author's aspect of children exchange, child trafficking currently is where a child is being stolen and sold. Children exchange was volunteering and could be permanent or temporary deepening on the families.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Children are keeping as described by the author in this chapter also focuses on the lives of the children where a child was expected to stay for a period with their mothers and some time with an elder woman. As stipulated in the book, the child was to spend most of the non-adult live with the mother and the other time with a more senior woman. This is a right approach since women that are more senior teach good morals and the culture to the children. Therefore, by the fact that the more aged women took charge of child keeping, the children get essential teachings about the culture. Spending time with the mother was only during the non-adult age. The child could find an opportunity to know the mother and interact for a short while. This way it seems that the mothers were denied their roles to take care and nurture their children in their way. It robs them the right to teach the morals they want their children to have many years later. Comparing this case with the current time, their mothers take the children care for the rest of their lives. This shows the transformation that has occurred over the years.

Chapter 7: Women and Men

The approach of Stack in this chapter to analyze sexual relationship from a female perspective was a tough choice. It was convenient to do so because the contacts were mostly female but the sexual relationship should be focused on male perspective according to my point of view. Having female perspective shows no sexual relationship dominion to male. On the same point, the permanent and long-lasting relationship between men and female being denied is an indicator of injustice. For any sexual relationship, it is a desire for the much in love people to look forward to a long-term engagement. This was not the case in the flat. It was not an option as the long-lasting relationship was prohibited. It also seems very unjust for the women to be penalized for having a boyfriend who does not work and yet the jobs for men were tough. In fact, this shows a great irony that author postulates. How is it possible for the women to have boyfriends that earn money yet earning money for men was severely limited? The income for women who does that was substantially reduced just for the sake of the sexual relationship. The author brings out the how complicated the men and women relationship was in the flat. The challenging matters and injustice they faced are accurately recorded in this chapter. However, the men and women relate in the present times even among the lower class people has improved. The people look forward towards the permanent link.

References

Stack, C. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community. New York: Harper & Row