While the Gods Were Sleeping

After her marriage to a man from Nepal, Elizabeth Enslin begins life in her husband’s village—and discovers allies among local women eager to organize for change. While the Gods Were Sleeping tells the story of her unexpected life in Nepal, set against a backdrop of increasing political turmoil. Enslin learns what it means for women to claim their place and power when they’re neither here nor there—when they’re caught between cultures, causes, places, social roles, families, duties, and political parties.

Chronicling her personal quest for belonging in a foreign place, Enslin also shares fascinating insights into the history, culture, and politics of this little understood corner of the world. Building on 25 years of family relationships and anthropological research, and written with a mother’s compassion and a researcher’s critical eye, While the Gods Were Sleeping reveals a compelling story of love, pregnancy, self-doubt, and prejudice in Nepal.

Elizabeth Enslin grew up in Seattle and went on to earn her PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University in 1990. While a graduate student, she married into a Brahman family in the plains of Nepal. Inspired by local women, especially her mother-in-law, she researched women’s organizing, poetics, politics, and agroecology. Her academic essay, "Beyond Writing: Feminist Practice and the Limits of Ethnography," still inspires conversations about feminism and the ethics of research and activism.

Enslin returned to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 and earned her living as a high school and college teacher, a grant writer, and an independent consultant. She has published creative nonfiction and poetry in The Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, The High Desert Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Opium Magazine, and In Posse Review and received an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Oregon Arts Commission and an honorable mention for the Pushcart Prize.

She currently lives in a strawbale house in the canyon country of northeastern Oregon, where she raises garlic, pigs, and yaks. While the Gods Were Sleeping is her first book. Learn more at elizabethenslin.com.