Kathleen C. Arceneaux’s New Novel Explores Challenges of First Contact With an Unknown Culture

Dec. 31, 2011 - PRLog -- Blacksburg, Virginia -- Jukima is an adventure tale, and literary fiction, as author Kathleen C. Arceneaux draws on personal experience to explore the challenges of a collision between ancient and modern cultures. The book is written from the point-of-view of Noelle, a young anthropologist who becomes stranded with the people she intended to study. In a reversal of roles, members of a pre-technological culture become the teachers, and Noelle must be the student. In order to survive, Noelle must adopt the customs of people very different from any she has ever known.

Arceneaux says, “At the heart of the book are the questions, which values would you hold close, and which would you change in order to adapt, for the sake of your own survival?” The Jukima are an ancient, isolated people who have evolved very differently from others. They have learned the power of imagination, and magic, and the realities to be found in dreaming. Arceneaux draws upon many of her own experiences in anthropology fieldwork in this fictionaized account of cultural first-contact.

For more information about the book, please visit: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/jukima/18766598

Arceneaux’s new short fiction can be found at: http://kcarceneaux.wordpress.com/

About Jukima & Dr. Kathleen C. Arceneaux

The novel Jukima won a Virginia Commission for the Arts Prize. Arceneaux has also won a Tara Fellowship from the Heekin Group for short fiction, and other awards, and her short story, “Survivor,” gained a Pushcart nomination. She has published fiction and poetry in a variety of literary magazines, including Chicago Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Northwest Review, and others. She holds a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech University, where she taught Cultural Studies. Arceneaux is an author and visual artist, and lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.