Go and Come Back - Hardcover

Joan Abelove

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0789424762 ISBN 13: 9780789424761

Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc., 1998

Synopsis

In the Amazon jungle of Peru, two female anthropologists, Joanna and Margarita, arrive to study Alicia's village, but the natives do not warm up to the strangers until a young girl adopted by Alicia is able to bridge the gap.

About this title

About the Author

For Joan Abelove, living in the Peruvian jungle to do her fieldwork was a life transforming experience. Her two years there and the friendships she developed with the Amazonian people fostered a deep love and keen interest in anthropology and led her to change her course of study. After returning from Peru, Abelove transferred from the clinical psychology program, where she had been a Ph.D. student, to the anthropology department, where she got her doctorate in cultural anthropology.

Go and Come Back (DK Ink, 1998), Abelove's first novel for young adults, was based on her fieldwork in the Amazon jungle. Booklist, in a starred review, remarked that "Abelove's story of a Peruvian tribe in the 1970s has a freshness to it . . . Abelove's remarkable gift is letting readers see their own culture through the eyes of someone whose values are completely different . . . Full of life and packed with characters that by turns irritate and enlighten, Go and Come Back is a startling, vibrant read."

Abelove's second book for young adults, Saying it Out Loud (DK Ink, 1999), recounts the story of a young woman dealing with her mother's illness and eventual death from cancer. It was immediately received with much praise, including three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and Booklist magazine which states that "this proves once again that Abelove can write books that are not only very complex but also vibrant and infused with tenderness."

Born in Florida and now residing in New York City, Abelove is married and has one son. She graduated from Barnard college with a degree in English literature and got her NYC Teaching License from the Bank Street School of Education. She received an A.B.D. in clinical psychology and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from CUNY.

Abelove taught undergraduate anthropology courses as an adjunct professor for several years at various colleges in the New York City area. She has presented papers at the American Anthropological Association conventions and at the Bennington Anthropological Conference on the Amazon.

Reviews

Grade 8 Up?A young teenage Indian girl narrates this engaging novel that deals with the impact of two American anthropologists who come to live for one year in her Peruvian jungle village. Alicia finds the outsiders interesting, although their ignorance and stinginess is a source of consternation and sometimes amusement. She has other concerns, too?she is supposed to marry her sister's husband, and she rescues and adopts a baby who is at risk from its abusive Peruvian father. By the end of the novel, the baby has died and the two "old ladies" (in their late 20s) are leaving, but both peoples have learned a lot about one another's humanity. The life and customs of the Indians are presented in a matter-of-fact way by Alicia, whether she is telling the strangers that it is important to have sex with several?but not too many?men in order to have strong babies, or that children must learn to lie well. Indian words and phrases flavor her speech. This compelling novel is based on the author's field work in the early 1970s; however, the group is given a fictional name and the information about their customs is anecdotal and never overwhelms the narrative. The spirited heroine evokes Karen Cushman's Catherine, Called Birdy (Clarion, 1994).?Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First-time novelist Abelove introduces readers to a sparkling world hidden deep within the Amazonian jungle of Peru, through the eyes of Alicia, an Isabo teenaged girl. There is no word for goodbye in Isabo; when two people part, they say "Catanhue," which means go and come back. Abelove exposes such subtleties of language and cultural differences as she tenuously stretches the lines of communication between the young protagonist and "two old white ladies" from "the New York." Initially, Alicia finds the pair who have come to study her cozy village stingy and wasteful. Laden with possessions, the women share none with the Isabo and suggest they move into any old house no one is using (Alicia reacts, "Whoever heard of a house no one was using?.... It takes a long time and a lot of people to build a house"). But she gradually befriends the two "old ladies" (who are actually in their 20s) and teaches them about her customs, about love and death, and about generosity. With Alicia as a guide, readers experience the everyday pleasures of a good meal or a daily morning dousing in the river as well as her quiet acceptance of life's brevity. Indeed, Alicia's cognizance sounds a foreboding note: the author, who based the novel on her own experience studying such a village, writes in an endnote that whether the village or its people still exist is unknown. Abelove seamlessly constructs a culture that may feel more real to readers than their own, and juxtaposes two markedly diverse cultures who ultimately discover more commonalities than differences. Ages 11-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An anthropologist draws on personal experience for this eye- opening tale of two graduate students learning to live alongside one of the more remote branches of the human family. When ``two old white ladies,'' Margarita and Joanna, settle in her Peruvian jungle village for a year, Alicia regards them with interest and pity. They are so ignorant! They don't know to face upstream when they bathe, they make often-hilarious mistakes with the language, they harbor odd ideas about sex and family--but most of all, they are ``stingy,'' and don't know how to share their wealth of possessions properly. Through Alicia's eyes, readers will watch the outsiders' adjustments to the rhythms and customs they are studying, as they shed much of their physical and cultural baggage (but not their Grateful Dead and Beatles records), and discover wisdom in the Isabo way of life. By the end, while there are some gulfs that cannot be crossed (e.g., when her adopted baby daughter dies, Alicia believes that Joanna and Margarita exhibit unnecessarily prolonged grief), the villagers and visitors achieve a degree of mutual understanding. As in Nancy Farmer's A Girl Named Disaster (1996), readers will be convinced that they've been living in the head of a young woman whose world view is vastly different from their own, but whose values and mores ultimately come to be perfectly understandable. (Fiction. 11-13) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 8^-10. Relatively few novels are published for children about "primitive" cultures, and most of those are historical fiction. So, right off the bat, Abelove's story of a Peruvian tribe in the 1970s has a freshness to it. An anthropologist, Abelove calls on her own experiences in the Amazon jungle to create the village of Poincushmana, where two American anthropologists arrive to spend a year. The story is told by one of the Peruvian teenagers, Alicia, a unique voice: "Two old white ladies came to our village late one day. . . . Everyone else ran down the riverbank to greet them. I stood at the top. I could see them fine from up there. I had better things to do than run to greet old white ladies." So begins Alicia's push-pull relationship with the women (whom the tribe considers old, even though they are in their twenties). Abelove's remarkable gift is letting readers see their own culture through the eyes of someone whose values are completely different. To Alicia and the villagers, the women are stingy--they rarely offer anything, and, when they do, it's not enough; they're stupid, because they waste their time studying things that happen naturally, such as babies and farming. At the same time, readers will learn about a community with views on life, death, sex, and marriage that are so different from their own that they will be pulled up short. Full of life and packed with characters that by turns irritate and enlighten, Go and Come Back is a startling, vibrant read. Ilene Cooper

Edition details

• Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0789424762
• ISBN 13: 9780789424761
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 177