Journeys with Flies
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: November 1, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 168
ISBN-13: 9780226900186
Subjects: Indigenous peoples; Travel writing; c 1970 to c 1980; c 1980 to c 1990; c 1990 to c 2000; Philosophy Of Anthropology; Travel; Archaeology / Anthropology; Southern Africa; Anthropology - Cultural; Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural; Anthropology - General; General; Anthropologists; Anthropology; Biography; Field work; Fieldwork; Philosophy; United States; Wilmsen, Edwin N
First sentence: Persimmons tasted first in stories brought to me from China were taken back in nightmares, those lines drawn between dreams . . . fear that the quarter saved from nickels left under pillows by tooth-fairies, pennies paid for carpets hung over clotheslines and beaten on Saturdays to buy my first real red persimmon, as costly as a boy's shirt at that time, would be taken by some phantom neighbor bully while my faithful white dog stood by.
Description: "From 1973 to 1994, the anthropologist Edwin Wilmsen lived and worked among the Zhu, Mbanduru, and Tswana people of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. Thousands of miles from his home, immersed in what first seemed a radically different place, and operating in languages he initially did not understand, he began a record of his impressions and reflections as a complement to his scientific fieldwork.

Journeys with Flies weaves together the multilayered experiences of his life among these Kalahari people, capturing at once the intellectual challenges an anthropologist faces in the field and the myriad and strange ways that unfamiliar experiences come to resonate with deeply personal thoughts and recollections."--BOOK JACKET.

"Wilmsen uses biography, poetry, and anthropology to portray the intense realities of life in the Kalahari, carrying the reader across space and time as events in the present trigger emotions and memories."--BOOK JACKET.