Journal for Wogan. Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso
Chapter one “Quoting the Ancestors” by Keith Basso portrays how places are not mere geographical locations, but they have social meanings. In particular, one learns that people’s historical imagination creates and modifies places. While I was reading this chapter, I asked myself; how and where did my ancestors live? Basso calls the past as a foreign country (Basso, 1996). As such, it means that the ancestors did things differently as compared to how we do today.

The more I thought about my ancestral land, the more I became interested to know how people lived during that period. Although memory and imagination can take me back in time, it is hard to understand why and how individuals participated in various activities. In reality, multiple things appear to have changed such that going back in the past might be harder than migrating to a foreign country.

What comes to your mind when you hear someone mentioning the name of your an...