num_pages: 368
description: What Margaret Mead did for Samoa, Colin Turnbull did for Africa. An upper class Oxford-educated Englishman, Turnbullâ€™s life-long love affair with the African Pygmies made him one of the most famous intellectuals of the 1960s and â€˜70s. In an intimate portrait of a remarkable man--at various times a gold-miner, builder of â€œThe African Queen,â€ and anti-death penalty advocate--Grinker describes how Turnbull fell in love with a beautiful but poor African American named Joe Towles who became as much Turnbulâ€™s heroic creation as did the Pygmies. For 30 years, they lives as an openly gay, interracial couple in New York City and rural Virginia until Joeâ€™s death of AIDS in 1988. Devastated, Turnbull buried his own spirit in a second coffin laid next to Towles, gave away most of his money, and until his own death from AIDS in 1994, lived as a Buddhist monk tutored by the Dalai Lamaâ€™s eldest brother. This is a compelling story of a celebrity scholar, his sexuality and his passion for a fiercely lived life.
language: English
title: In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull
titlecomplete: In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull
genres: Africa, Ethnography, Nonfiction, Biography
ratings_count: 53
publisher: St. Martin's