Parallel Worlds : An Anthropologist and a Writer Encounter Africa

Rating:
Summary: A great start
Review: I've used this book in two classes on the anthropology of religion, and the students love it. The anthropologist wife writes in a way they're familiar with from other ethnographies, and the husband in lovely prose. I think students react so well because the authors aren't afraid to write about their screw-ups, defeats, and fears. I use this as the first book in the semester, BEFORE I send students out into the field. It lets them know that they can do this scary thing called fieldwork and still be themselves.

Rating:
Summary: A great start
Review: Of course, I read this for a class, but I would read this again (which I will since I bought it). This is the first book that shows a believable encounter of a foreigner with a new culture. Generally, authors are reluctant to describe in detail all the mistakes and humiliations that occur when entering a new world, but these authors are unafraid to share their trials, but of course their tribulations as well. It is really a heartwarming tale of friendships formed in a strange and exciting world. Plus, it reads like a novel!

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious Encounters
Review: Of course, I read this for a class, but I would read this again (which I will since I bought it). This is the first book that shows a believable encounter of a foreigner with a new culture. Generally, authors are reluctant to describe in detail all the mistakes and humiliations that occur when entering a new world, but these authors are unafraid to share their trials, but of course their tribulations as well. It is really a heartwarming tale of friendships formed in a strange and exciting world. Plus, it reads like a novel!

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, compelling and unique
Review: Parallel Worlds provides unique insights not only into the world of the Beng, but into the challenging experience of a writer and an anthropologist trying to fit in and to understand an unfamiliar culture. The two alternating voices are interwoven to create a narrative of the couple's years in the Cote d'Ivoire that allow the book to transcend categorization as strictly creative non-fiction or anthropology. Graham's passages are filled with the quiet and distinctive prose that categorizes his work as a short story writer and a novelist. Gottlieb's sections are filled with insights as she learns more about the Beng, often through complicated backward and forward steps as mistakes are made, discovered, and corrected. For readers unfamiliar with African culture, this book provides a beautiful but ultimately real portrait of Beng life as the writers become more and more part of the villiage existance. But perhaps the most interesting thread of the narrative is the gradual process of the familiar turning strange, of America existing as a paralell and unfamiliar world viewed from a distance.