Reader-response

The concept of the week is the reader-response method of dealing with text. As you recall from class, this means that when you write about a text you walk us through your own idiosyncratic response to the text, explaining what you experienced and why. What can we learn from your reader's response to a text? Choose any of this week's or last week's stories to look at via the reader-response method ("When it Changed," "All You Zombies--", "Bloodchild," "Nekropolis," "Something to Hitch Meat To," or "Kirinyaga").

The story I want to write my reader's response on is "Kirinyaga" by Mike Resnick. When I first began reading the story I was excited, because I love learning about Africa and the ways of life there. However, I know that tribes have weird and sometimes unethical rituals in the eyes of outsiders, and the particular rituals the Kikuyu performed in "Kirinyaga" were hard for me to get past. I hate the idea of killing little babies, but also understand that to a person with the Kikuyu people's customs and religion, it is necessary. When Barbara Eaton came to negotiate with Koriba, the tribe's mundumugu, I kept thinking "Just give her the babies, witch doctor!!!!" because I was personally frustrated by their rituals. Eaton did not understand either and ended up leaving with no new terms with the tribe. For Koriba though, abandoning their native rituals is absolutely out of the question. He is the tribe's spiritual leader, and he is clearly going to stay devoted to keeping his tribe whole, no matter what the cost. Even the chief and other leaders tried convincing him to give in and he took a firm stand for their religion, leaving all of them feeling guilty. I know that the ritual at hand is obviously very controversial, AND I personally think it's totally wrong, but it made me relate it to myself. It's just the same as a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or any religion being told to conform and stop doing something that is part of everything they believe, and in essence, who they are. While in my eyes it is viewed as murder and stupid, in the eyes of the Kikuyu it is sacred and actually beneficial.
On a side note, the mention of Kirinyaga being on a planet other than Earth was totally confusing and out of place to me, but it did remind me that I was reading SF (haha).