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Return to Laughter: An Anthropological Novel
A vivid and dramatic account of the experiences of an American anthropologist who lived with a primitive bush tribe in Africa.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
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June 22, 2024
A wonderful novel, based on the author’s first year of fieldwork among the Tiv people, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiv_people in central Nigeria in 1949. I think it’s pretty lightly fictionalized, though she says it’s thoroughly fictitious. Really, if you like anthropology, anthropological science fiction, or mid 20th-century West African tribal history, this is a book you need to read. Bohannon writes wonderfully well, and the people she went to study were on the cusp of stronger British/Western influence. A five-star book!
Book Quote:
“Everyone knew Ava and her wives. They were the model household for the community, one every husband cited when his wives disagreed. Ava was a tall, rather light-skinned woman who was . . . the senior of five wives. . . . She saved up 40 or 50 shillings (about $55 to 67 in 2020 values) every few years, searched out an industrious girl of congenial character, and presented her to her husband: “Here is your new wife.”
Ava’s husband always welcomed her additions to his household and he always set to work to pay the rest of the bridewealth, for he knew perfectly well that Ava always picked hard-working, healthy, handsome, steady women who wouldn’t run away. Many men envied him.”
Of course, polygamy didn’t always work this well — nor did the author address the question about the poor fellows who got no wife, once the available pool of eligible women were all taken. This was one of many revelations of the very different world-view of the Tiv people compared to the author’s. Witchcraft was another, which I recall was regularly featured in newspaper articles when my parents lived in Kenya in the late 1960s and early 70s. And Bohannon (at least in her account) became quite adept in navigating the cross-currents of local tribal politics.
Melanie Pages wrote the best review I saw online: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Laura Bohannon (1922-2002): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_B...
Book Quote:
“Everyone knew Ava and her wives. They were the model household for the community, one every husband cited when his wives disagreed. Ava was a tall, rather light-skinned woman who was . . . the senior of five wives. . . . She saved up 40 or 50 shillings (about $55 to 67 in 2020 values) every few years, searched out an industrious girl of congenial character, and presented her to her husband: “Here is your new wife.”
Ava’s husband always welcomed her additions to his household and he always set to work to pay the rest of the bridewealth, for he knew perfectly well that Ava always picked hard-working, healthy, handsome, steady women who wouldn’t run away. Many men envied him.”
Of course, polygamy didn’t always work this well — nor did the author address the question about the poor fellows who got no wife, once the available pool of eligible women were all taken. This was one of many revelations of the very different world-view of the Tiv people compared to the author’s. Witchcraft was another, which I recall was regularly featured in newspaper articles when my parents lived in Kenya in the late 1960s and early 70s. And Bohannon (at least in her account) became quite adept in navigating the cross-currents of local tribal politics.
Melanie Pages wrote the best review I saw online: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Laura Bohannon (1922-2002): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_B...
December 29, 2018
I know I bought Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowden at a used book store, but I can’t remember what drew me to it. Perhaps the focus on a West African tribe? I've struggled to share with you what the book is supposed to be about. The marketing descriptor says “anthropology/fiction.” Penguin categorizes it as “women’s fiction.” The author is Bowden, but when I Googled the book, I kept getting Laura Bohannan. #Confusing. I decided to do some research.
Laura Bohannan was an American anthropologist who went to grad school in England. She spent much of 1949 – 1953 in Nigeria with the Tiv tribe. Return to Laughter, published in 1954, is based on Bohannan’s time with the tribe, but because she chose to present her work more as a story than scientific observation, she chose the pen name Elenore Smith Bowden in case her book was viewed as unprofessional. Once people realized Bowden and Bohannan were the same, reprints had her real name on the cover.
Return to Laughter appears to be a work of ethnography: “It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group.” I’m not sure how much of Bohannan’s novel is fictional, to be honest, which makes it hard to jump in. What should my mindset be? In her author’s note, Bohannan writes:
Told in first-person, Bohannan acknowledges that an anthropologist, simply by being there, changes her own data. It is the job of the anthropologist to “rest on a meticulous accuracy of observation and on a cool, objective approach to data.” But how can Bohannan be cool and objective when her Tiv friend dies in labor, a death that could have been prevented in a Western hospital? The woman’s husband claims she was under a spell cast by a witch.
There are many real witches among the Tiv, all senior men in the tribe. Nothing is ever chance — witches cause death and illness, which means the person deemed the malicious witch must suffer consequences. Bohannan cannot convince them otherwise. The novel raises important questions about how removed an anthropologist really can be in the face of a community that won’t change simply because Bohannan tells them their “wrong.”
Bohannan stays with the Tiv for 5 months, learning the language and culture from scratch with no interpreter. The more she’s exposed to the deep belief in witch craft, the more she sees the Tiv as “savages.” Bitterness fills her heart, but as a readers it’s easy to see her as a white woman forcing herself on a tribe. She was welcomed there, but I couldn’t help but see the Tiv as “specimens” when Bohannan was impatient with them. And that’s the interesting part about any story of a white Westerner who lives in typically colonized regions. How will the Westerner change in heart and mind when she’s trying to change the people she’s studying in moments of frustration? What will she report back to other Westerners? And the ending of Return to Laughter, which was quite intense and hard to put down (I was up until 1:00AM reading), emphasizes that Bohannan can leave Nigeria at any time. This is her privilege, a concept she recognizes and analyzes in the 1950s (yes, checking your privilege existed before 2010).
Bohannan’s choice to write an “anthropological novel” makes it accessible while retaining the spirit of anthropology. She’s in the same boat at Zora Neale Hurston, who inserted herself into her own anthropological stories. While ethnography is more accessible, there are questions about its ethics. Regardless, Return to Laughter is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time, especially for the way it reveals different perspectives in understanding human relationships. A gripping, highly recommended story. I’ll be keeping this book.
This book was originally reviewed at Grab the Lapels.
Laura Bohannan was an American anthropologist who went to grad school in England. She spent much of 1949 – 1953 in Nigeria with the Tiv tribe. Return to Laughter, published in 1954, is based on Bohannan’s time with the tribe, but because she chose to present her work more as a story than scientific observation, she chose the pen name Elenore Smith Bowden in case her book was viewed as unprofessional. Once people realized Bowden and Bohannan were the same, reprints had her real name on the cover.
Return to Laughter appears to be a work of ethnography: “It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group.” I’m not sure how much of Bohannan’s novel is fictional, to be honest, which makes it hard to jump in. What should my mindset be? In her author’s note, Bohannan writes:
All the characters in this book, except myself, are fictitious in the fullest meaning of the word. . . . the incidents of the book are of the genre I myself experienced in Africa. . . . I am an anthropologist. The tribe I have described here does exist. This book is the story of the way I did field work among them. (emphasis mine)What I take away from this note is that Bohannan isn’t submitting to readers a work of anthropology, but how she worked as an anthropologist. Bohannan never names the tribe or country in Return to Laughter, which some believe is an attempt to protect the Tiv tribe.
Told in first-person, Bohannan acknowledges that an anthropologist, simply by being there, changes her own data. It is the job of the anthropologist to “rest on a meticulous accuracy of observation and on a cool, objective approach to data.” But how can Bohannan be cool and objective when her Tiv friend dies in labor, a death that could have been prevented in a Western hospital? The woman’s husband claims she was under a spell cast by a witch.
There are many real witches among the Tiv, all senior men in the tribe. Nothing is ever chance — witches cause death and illness, which means the person deemed the malicious witch must suffer consequences. Bohannan cannot convince them otherwise. The novel raises important questions about how removed an anthropologist really can be in the face of a community that won’t change simply because Bohannan tells them their “wrong.”
Bohannan stays with the Tiv for 5 months, learning the language and culture from scratch with no interpreter. The more she’s exposed to the deep belief in witch craft, the more she sees the Tiv as “savages.” Bitterness fills her heart, but as a readers it’s easy to see her as a white woman forcing herself on a tribe. She was welcomed there, but I couldn’t help but see the Tiv as “specimens” when Bohannan was impatient with them. And that’s the interesting part about any story of a white Westerner who lives in typically colonized regions. How will the Westerner change in heart and mind when she’s trying to change the people she’s studying in moments of frustration? What will she report back to other Westerners? And the ending of Return to Laughter, which was quite intense and hard to put down (I was up until 1:00AM reading), emphasizes that Bohannan can leave Nigeria at any time. This is her privilege, a concept she recognizes and analyzes in the 1950s (yes, checking your privilege existed before 2010).
Bohannan’s choice to write an “anthropological novel” makes it accessible while retaining the spirit of anthropology. She’s in the same boat at Zora Neale Hurston, who inserted herself into her own anthropological stories. While ethnography is more accessible, there are questions about its ethics. Regardless, Return to Laughter is a book I’ll be thinking about for a long time, especially for the way it reveals different perspectives in understanding human relationships. A gripping, highly recommended story. I’ll be keeping this book.
This book was originally reviewed at Grab the Lapels.
May 23, 2022
Written by anthropologist Laura Bohannon, published under pseudonym Elenore Smith Bowen in 1954, based on living with the Tiv group of Nigeria in 1949-1953.
LOTS of interesting food for thinking and discussion in this book.
Absolutely fascinating account of her struggles to learn and understand local culture and beliefs, and the conflicts with her own beliefs and morals. What about witchcraft, ostracizing someone accused of witchcraft, herself being ostracized for continuing to visit this person. Should/can she live and act as the others do? or does she want to retain some of her own value system, at the risk of being perceived as rude and even evil.
She must have been one of the first to do what today is considered par for the course, namely, participant observation.
I eagerly re-read the book in 2022, she really examined her own emotions and behavior very carefully and extensively.
Nearing the end of a second stint of 4 months in the village, "I had become incapable of thinking or feeling clearly either in their terms or in mine." "I refused to admit that the hooting of the owls at night made me nervous." 253 "I grew fearful of the temptation to question my own values that these people afforded me."
It is hard for me to fully comprehend the very extensive role of witchcraft in this society. So so different from how we are raised in prosperous western countries. The author explains witchcraft in many different situations and angles. It is fascinating, but indeed scary. Quite complicated. Important too.
250: "I had been talking about vaccination, but people interpreted what I said in terms of witchcraft."
"...the callousness of a whole culture, a protection against the pain that had to be borne."
"It is an error to assume that to know is to understand and that to understand is to like [=accept?]. The greater the extent to which one has participated in a genuinely foreign culture and understood it, the greater the extent to which one realizes that one could not, without violence to one's personal integrity, be *of* it." 291
The author's repeated use of 'savages' and 'primitive' bothered me. I imagine she would not use those words today.
"Ikpoom was a good man by nature, but he was a savage. They were all savages. For the first time I applied the word to them in my own thinking. And it fit. ... What could they offer save poverty of life and of spirit?" 230
LOTS of interesting food for thinking and discussion in this book.
Absolutely fascinating account of her struggles to learn and understand local culture and beliefs, and the conflicts with her own beliefs and morals. What about witchcraft, ostracizing someone accused of witchcraft, herself being ostracized for continuing to visit this person. Should/can she live and act as the others do? or does she want to retain some of her own value system, at the risk of being perceived as rude and even evil.
She must have been one of the first to do what today is considered par for the course, namely, participant observation.
I eagerly re-read the book in 2022, she really examined her own emotions and behavior very carefully and extensively.
Nearing the end of a second stint of 4 months in the village, "I had become incapable of thinking or feeling clearly either in their terms or in mine." "I refused to admit that the hooting of the owls at night made me nervous." 253 "I grew fearful of the temptation to question my own values that these people afforded me."
It is hard for me to fully comprehend the very extensive role of witchcraft in this society. So so different from how we are raised in prosperous western countries. The author explains witchcraft in many different situations and angles. It is fascinating, but indeed scary. Quite complicated. Important too.
250: "I had been talking about vaccination, but people interpreted what I said in terms of witchcraft."
"...the callousness of a whole culture, a protection against the pain that had to be borne."
"It is an error to assume that to know is to understand and that to understand is to like [=accept?]. The greater the extent to which one has participated in a genuinely foreign culture and understood it, the greater the extent to which one realizes that one could not, without violence to one's personal integrity, be *of* it." 291
The author's repeated use of 'savages' and 'primitive' bothered me. I imagine she would not use those words today.
"Ikpoom was a good man by nature, but he was a savage. They were all savages. For the first time I applied the word to them in my own thinking. And it fit. ... What could they offer save poverty of life and of spirit?" 230
August 21, 2015
An absolutely stunning book, which I read on the high recommendation of Michael Taussig in I SWEAR I SAW THIS. Here is a novel utterly neglected by so-called literary specialists, one that belongs on those "100 Best Novels of the Century" lists. Put it on the shelf next to HEART OF DARKNESS and MY LIFE IN THE BUSH OF GHOSTS.
March 16, 2018
"It is bad to sit alone in the bush, where there are ants and snakes and witches."
This book is WONDERFUL.
It's a work of fiction written by a field worker, based on her time with a primitive bush tribe. She went to school to become a good anthropologist. I can only assume that sheer serendipity made her an amazing writer.
Return to Laughter is compulsively readable, endlessly entertaining, never patronizing, sometimes heartbreaking. It provides a window into a time and a place that may be long vanished with exposure to other cultures, while showing that in some ways people are always the same.
Cannot praise it enough.
This book is WONDERFUL.
It's a work of fiction written by a field worker, based on her time with a primitive bush tribe. She went to school to become a good anthropologist. I can only assume that sheer serendipity made her an amazing writer.
Return to Laughter is compulsively readable, endlessly entertaining, never patronizing, sometimes heartbreaking. It provides a window into a time and a place that may be long vanished with exposure to other cultures, while showing that in some ways people are always the same.
Cannot praise it enough.
April 25, 2021
I tried to read this book a while ago - right after I got back from being on lockdown at my field station. I found it difficult to get into and I was also too close to the matter; over the last year, I had been introspecting about my place at my field site and these thoughts were magnified while as the only "mainlander" in an island field station under lockdown. So I abandoned the attempt.
Going back to it now, many months ahead of field reality and missing it, I found it both complicated and important. I've never read a field account so honest without being casually humorous, so thoughtful without moral high ground and so general while being super specific about an unnamed tribe. The conflicts of the objective observer with the human with a specific set of principles mirror many inner conflicts that people have (and should have) while dealing with cultures other than their own. As David Reisman points out in the foreword, "the tension between wanting to help and wanting to understand is productive".
I also came away with some ethical questions. This book is labelled fiction but is it really? This is definitely the stitching together of many experiences, but as I understand, these experiences are real - the framework of the story is fiction. So where do the boundaries of the fiction end and experience begin? What happens to consent and other ethical considerations if the indigenous group here is "fictionalised"?
Going back to it now, many months ahead of field reality and missing it, I found it both complicated and important. I've never read a field account so honest without being casually humorous, so thoughtful without moral high ground and so general while being super specific about an unnamed tribe. The conflicts of the objective observer with the human with a specific set of principles mirror many inner conflicts that people have (and should have) while dealing with cultures other than their own. As David Reisman points out in the foreword, "the tension between wanting to help and wanting to understand is productive".
I also came away with some ethical questions. This book is labelled fiction but is it really? This is definitely the stitching together of many experiences, but as I understand, these experiences are real - the framework of the story is fiction. So where do the boundaries of the fiction end and experience begin? What happens to consent and other ethical considerations if the indigenous group here is "fictionalised"?
November 27, 2021
I read this book as a college student in the 1960’s and it made a great impression then and It led me to study Anthropology as a major. It really was my first awareness of the concept of different cultures and their wholeness. I clearly was only aware of my own experience in US life and carried the idea of Western superiority.
Rereading it more than 50 years later, was just as absorbing and I was surprised by how many details I actually remembered.
Rereading it more than 50 years later, was just as absorbing and I was surprised by how many details I actually remembered.
Read
June 17, 2009I didn't much care for the attempt to rationalize away cruelty, but I liked the bits in which the women made a spirited defense of polygyny. People tend to assume that women won't approve of polygyny, but the Tiv women argue the advantages to the women, which are often ignored.
March 7, 2019
I honestly thought it was really interesting and really liked it. Guess it's a good thing I'm minoring in Anthropology, huh? It's probably not something I would have picked up for myself, so I'm glad it was assigned to me.
I think if this was written by someone who wasn't an anthropologist and hadn't done field work, it wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. I'm studying Anthropology, but I wouldn't be able to write a book like this. There's just some things you need experience for.
I think if this was written by someone who wasn't an anthropologist and hadn't done field work, it wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. I'm studying Anthropology, but I wouldn't be able to write a book like this. There's just some things you need experience for.
January 4, 2008
I've read this book three times in classes, but I still love it. As a bigger fan of literature than non-fiction, this book was perfect for me, because it is a true story told very fancifully. Though there is some question of how much this approach affects the anthropological value of the text, I think it is a brilliant way to introduce students to the world of anthropology.
April 15, 2008
This is a book that I read in 1975 which inspired me to join the Peace Corps as a young woman. For Christmas my husband searched out of print books and found a copy for me. I read it again and still loved it.
June 11, 2014
This was an excellent book. Though it is fiction, it is based on Bohannon's actual experiences doing anthropological fieldwork. Through reading this, I really feel like I have some sense of what it was like for her living with the Tiv. Absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend!
May 11, 2007
I love the concept of magic and witchcraft in medicine. It helps to keep a perspective on our own ideas of infallible medicine and killer "germs."
April 11, 2007
i didn't like this book really.
i had to read it for class. it is a good example of fieldwork done by an ethnocentric Europeian in the 20th century.
i had to read it for class. it is a good example of fieldwork done by an ethnocentric Europeian in the 20th century.
July 30, 2010
Ok, but not great. It's interesting to see how other people live, but sometimes I was really bothered by the author's closeminded-ness and sense of superiority.
December 9, 2020
This novel grew out of the fieldwork that Laura Bohannen did among the Tiv people of Nigeria in the 1950s. When she wrote the book, she originally used a pseudonym and never told the name of the group of people she was living with at the time. The book does give a different feel to it than a normal anthropological text, something she and her husband later wrote about this group, but it was hard for me to get into the book. I found it hard to follow who the different characters were and I found the narrator often hard to really like as she tended to play some mind games with the people whom she was researching.
March 7, 2021
When I first started reading this book I was instantly pulled in, and I was able to knock out the first few chapters super quickly. I thought the ideas being discussed were really interesting, and I enjoyed seeing the exploration of this culture I knew nothing about. Somewhere in the middle the I fell off and just could not bring myself to want to pick it up. Things slowed to a snails pace and I felt like the book was just dragging on and on about nothing in particular. The ending brought things back a little, but still didn't have the same impact as the beginning. Overall not a bad read, just ok.
May 19, 2025
I think that as far as anthropological novels go, this one is very detailed and I could imagine the descriptive scenes very clearly. I was frustrated throughout the entire book by the authors’ own reflections and experiences, I found myself cringing and flustered, but I think that this was just part of the experience, it was her journey and I appreciated the fact that she was honest about her flaws.
The messages within the novel are very deep and cause reflection. This is a thought provoking read, it is not light and fluffy, I enjoyed it for what it is. I recommend it, if you are used to anthropological novels.
The messages within the novel are very deep and cause reflection. This is a thought provoking read, it is not light and fluffy, I enjoyed it for what it is. I recommend it, if you are used to anthropological novels.
June 12, 2017
I found this anthropological memoir while researching for my latest writing project on Realigning Culture and was mesmerized by both Bohannan's adventure and her journey of discovery. The reader is drawn into what it might have been like to be an Oxford trained anthropologist living with a primitive African tribe while learning as much about oneself and one's own culture as the one under study.
November 26, 2019
Sadly, Redwoman, the main character, doesn’t age well. Although I can’t help but wonder if she ever was even an ideal anthropologist, even in 1954. She seemed to enter Nigeria with a preconceived idea of the Tiv and looked for confirmation rather than trying to challenge her stereotypes.
Still a entertaining and easy read.
Still a entertaining and easy read.
February 28, 2025
My first real look into an Anthropological work and I’m obsessed!! So interesting to immerse yourself into a culture fully in order to learn about them and have them fully welcome you in. Not much of an experienced Anthology reader so can’t say I can give much of a technical review but I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be looking for more in the future!
July 23, 2017
I read this for a college class in 1976 or so. It remains with me to this day and shapes how I read newer anthropology memoirs or novels.
September 7, 2018
Not a fabulous work of fiction, but an incredible look at living in an African village tribe from the standpoint of the cultural anthropologist.
January 23, 2021
really interesting, the characters of the Tiv tribe really make you smile. So interesting to read about a culture absolutely different than our own.
Read
July 26, 2024'Fear made us all cruel.'
May 7, 2025
This is an anthropological study published like a story your auntie tells you - the long ones which spill all the tea.
Not bad, not great, good if you want an insight into mid century anthropology.
Not bad, not great, good if you want an insight into mid century anthropology.
Read
October 19, 2025Read for class. Don’t really know what happened
October 19, 2025
This book was boring and barely kept my attention. I read it for my anthropology class which I feel like it gave useful knowledge which is why I’m giving it three stars.
June 3, 2015
I feel as though I know Laura Bohannan aka Elenore Smith Bowen. For the past semester that I've slowly re-read this book, I've felt as though we've become friends, and I didn't want this book's adventures to end because then I wouldn't see my friend anymore.
From the back cover of the 1964 edition by Margaret Mead: "It is remarkable to have a novel included int eh Natural History Library, but RETURN TO LAUGHTER is a remarkable novel. A vivid and dramatic account of the profound change experienced by an American anthropologist in her first year as an intimate of a primitive bush tribe in Africa, it provides deep insights into the indigenous culture of West Africa, the subtle web of tribal life, the power of the institution of witchcraft. Primarily, however, it is a classic story of the outsider caught up and deeply, personally involved in an alien culture - "the first introspective account ever published of what it's like to be a field worker among a primitive people."
This was a question on an epic take-home-exam in my Theater History I class taught by the inimitable John Wilson at Cornish College of the Arts. It is the philosophy that the theater's purpose from ritual is to relieve its people of the humdrum and return them to life. This book does this in droves and I can only hope that the theater I produce and participate in will have the effect on the audiences that need it.
Some of the "deep insights" that Margaret Mead mentions in this book are:
"Udama spoke very soberly. "Now there is hate and trouble in the homestead. Whatever Kako does, hate will remain in someone's heart." For the first time, Udama looked and spoke directly at me. "Once a wrong has been done, it never dies. People speak the words of peace, but their hearts do not forgive. Generations perform ceremonies of reconciliation, but there is no end." (151)
"This, then, was my answer. Witchcraft was their greatest terror, but witches were only people. Everywhere one must fight to survive. There is measure of insecurity in all societies. We may consider it easier to accept defeat at the hands of fate; fate is unconquerable. But where disaster is held to come from the hands of one's fellows, there defeat is not inevitable, there one need not cease to hope. Only my overwrought imagination had shown me the reign of witches as a reign of terror." (171)
"On and on. There is not stronger emotion than terror, but there is one thing greater than terror: fatigue. We walked. There was nothing left in our minds, our hearts or nerves or bodies to show that we lived, but we walked." (281)
"No, I could not forget. I had followed Agundu. My soul's protest was so deep that I nearly cried aloud: I can look on Agundu, on reality, unafraid, but I cannot see my own naked being. I had followed science out here, as one follows a will-o'-the-wisp, seeing only what beckoned from the distance, paying no heed to the earth that I spurned beneath my feet, seeing naught about me. I had served anthropology well. Notebook upon notebook, good stuff, and accurate, and I had the knowledge to work it soundly so that I might stand, with a craftman's pride, before the finished work and say, "This is mine."/ I had followed Agundu. There was no jury, no god, before whom I could stand unashamed to say, "This is me." Me, as I sat there, the product of my pettiness and my cowardice. But not I. I was still unfinished, could still change, could still return. I had learned. I had discovered that there were moral values which I could not willfully abandon, no matter what the dictates and interests of science and no matter how impossible it had been for me to live up to those standards. I had run away from the choice when I had finally seen it - like Lucia. I would always have to live with that knowledge of personal inadequacy. Very well, I could benefit from the smarting salt of humility." (289-90)
"It is an error to assume that to know is to understand and that to understand is to like. The greater the extant to which one has lived and participated in a genuinely foreign culture and understood it, the greater the extent to which one realizes that one could not, without violence to one's personal integrity, be of it. This importance of fidelity to one's own culture and one's own standards is mutual. That is what tolerance means: allowing each man his own integrity. Not an eclectic picking of convenient moral maxims for oneself./ Like the practice of free speech, free though and free reading, the act of immersion is an wholly foreign culture demands the will and ability to think one may not accept what it is as what should be, on the mere grounds that "it is so." More than ever I had to admit that Poorgbilin's senior wife had been right: I had the heart of child and had yet to learn wisdom." (291)
From the back cover of the 1964 edition by Margaret Mead: "It is remarkable to have a novel included int eh Natural History Library, but RETURN TO LAUGHTER is a remarkable novel. A vivid and dramatic account of the profound change experienced by an American anthropologist in her first year as an intimate of a primitive bush tribe in Africa, it provides deep insights into the indigenous culture of West Africa, the subtle web of tribal life, the power of the institution of witchcraft. Primarily, however, it is a classic story of the outsider caught up and deeply, personally involved in an alien culture - "the first introspective account ever published of what it's like to be a field worker among a primitive people."
This was a question on an epic take-home-exam in my Theater History I class taught by the inimitable John Wilson at Cornish College of the Arts. It is the philosophy that the theater's purpose from ritual is to relieve its people of the humdrum and return them to life. This book does this in droves and I can only hope that the theater I produce and participate in will have the effect on the audiences that need it.
Some of the "deep insights" that Margaret Mead mentions in this book are:
"Udama spoke very soberly. "Now there is hate and trouble in the homestead. Whatever Kako does, hate will remain in someone's heart." For the first time, Udama looked and spoke directly at me. "Once a wrong has been done, it never dies. People speak the words of peace, but their hearts do not forgive. Generations perform ceremonies of reconciliation, but there is no end." (151)
"This, then, was my answer. Witchcraft was their greatest terror, but witches were only people. Everywhere one must fight to survive. There is measure of insecurity in all societies. We may consider it easier to accept defeat at the hands of fate; fate is unconquerable. But where disaster is held to come from the hands of one's fellows, there defeat is not inevitable, there one need not cease to hope. Only my overwrought imagination had shown me the reign of witches as a reign of terror." (171)
"On and on. There is not stronger emotion than terror, but there is one thing greater than terror: fatigue. We walked. There was nothing left in our minds, our hearts or nerves or bodies to show that we lived, but we walked." (281)
"No, I could not forget. I had followed Agundu. My soul's protest was so deep that I nearly cried aloud: I can look on Agundu, on reality, unafraid, but I cannot see my own naked being. I had followed science out here, as one follows a will-o'-the-wisp, seeing only what beckoned from the distance, paying no heed to the earth that I spurned beneath my feet, seeing naught about me. I had served anthropology well. Notebook upon notebook, good stuff, and accurate, and I had the knowledge to work it soundly so that I might stand, with a craftman's pride, before the finished work and say, "This is mine."/ I had followed Agundu. There was no jury, no god, before whom I could stand unashamed to say, "This is me." Me, as I sat there, the product of my pettiness and my cowardice. But not I. I was still unfinished, could still change, could still return. I had learned. I had discovered that there were moral values which I could not willfully abandon, no matter what the dictates and interests of science and no matter how impossible it had been for me to live up to those standards. I had run away from the choice when I had finally seen it - like Lucia. I would always have to live with that knowledge of personal inadequacy. Very well, I could benefit from the smarting salt of humility." (289-90)
"It is an error to assume that to know is to understand and that to understand is to like. The greater the extant to which one has lived and participated in a genuinely foreign culture and understood it, the greater the extent to which one realizes that one could not, without violence to one's personal integrity, be of it. This importance of fidelity to one's own culture and one's own standards is mutual. That is what tolerance means: allowing each man his own integrity. Not an eclectic picking of convenient moral maxims for oneself./ Like the practice of free speech, free though and free reading, the act of immersion is an wholly foreign culture demands the will and ability to think one may not accept what it is as what should be, on the mere grounds that "it is so." More than ever I had to admit that Poorgbilin's senior wife had been right: I had the heart of child and had yet to learn wisdom." (291)
February 2, 2016
Return to laughter is the personal account of Laura Bohannan 19s experiences as an anthropologist in Africa. To distance herself from the seriousness of the scientific enterprise, she has published under the pen name of Elenore Smith Bowen. The book follows her 1Cadventure 1D from the very beginning 13 her arrival among the tribe. It 19s mostly centered about self-reflection and the conflict of being a person from a culture studying a completely different culture as accurately as possible. Her relationships with the tribe members evolve and change. She makes mistakes, some silly, like undermining the chef 19s authority from the very second day by asking the man he put to guard her to go away and let the people come to her. At some point later in the book she is told to have the heart of a child 13 her wisdom is no good in the tribe. She makes friends among the tribes people, children and women. Eventually she enters serious anthropological terrain by playing one powerful man against the chief 13 it is so that she gains acces to the business of men, to trials, funerals and discussion. She gathers good knowledge from children also, as they have less shame in saying obvious things. Similarly to Nigel Barley in his account, who uses one shaman 19s honor against another and finds out about witchcraft from a child, she 1Cuses 1D both cunningness and luck in her quest to find out more.
One key moment in the story is after her friend Amara 19s death. For death or disaster to come, one must be bewitched, and the witch must be a close family member. A trial is conducted and the strong but despised Yabo, her father, is convicted, and everyone must leave him alone. Elenore however can not, as he is an extremely important informer. Her visits to his house shows to the eyes of all that she likes being in the company of a witch and later misunderstandings bring to the conclusion that she is a witch as well. Her other 1Cfriends 1D from the village stop talking to her, ignoring her completely. She is driven to a kind of hate and madness by her loneliness, hinding in western literature. Finally she decides to confront the chef, Kabo, openly, as only after he accepts her she can get people talking to her once again. She does so masterfully, crafting words and arguments of witchcraft against him 13 her knowledge of their language and culture is shown to have given her power within it. As of that moment, she can be greeted and answered questions again, but a cold distance remains. She does not feel the joy of being amongst them anymore.
Lastly the 1Cwater 1D, smallpox, comes and wrecks havoc in the village. People flee everywhere, one from another. She hides away in a station of priests. As she comes back, smallpox gone, a great storytelling event takes place to welcome her, and she sits and wonders at this marvelous people, the way they take on life, at 1Cclose quarters with tragedy 1D, how they 1Clive with their own failure and yet laugh 1D. It is the laughter of people 1Cwho all know that they build on shifting sand (and) have yet the courage to build what they know will fall 1D, 1Cwho value love and friendship and plenty, who have lived terror and death and hate 1D.
1EReturn to laughter 1D is a great cultural journey, as it does not imply only immersion in another culture, but keeping 19s one 19s own identity and sense of self as well. She must have not lost herself in their midst, because if she had, she could have not ended her research 13 and who would she have been anyway? In her quest to understand them, and understanding them as well as she could, she had to keep her own culture 19s values as well, and how could she, some times, when they deeply contrasted? 1EReturn to laughter 1D is then a testimonial not only of the personal aspects of anthropological fieldwork, but also of the faces and complexity of identity and self.
One key moment in the story is after her friend Amara 19s death. For death or disaster to come, one must be bewitched, and the witch must be a close family member. A trial is conducted and the strong but despised Yabo, her father, is convicted, and everyone must leave him alone. Elenore however can not, as he is an extremely important informer. Her visits to his house shows to the eyes of all that she likes being in the company of a witch and later misunderstandings bring to the conclusion that she is a witch as well. Her other 1Cfriends 1D from the village stop talking to her, ignoring her completely. She is driven to a kind of hate and madness by her loneliness, hinding in western literature. Finally she decides to confront the chef, Kabo, openly, as only after he accepts her she can get people talking to her once again. She does so masterfully, crafting words and arguments of witchcraft against him 13 her knowledge of their language and culture is shown to have given her power within it. As of that moment, she can be greeted and answered questions again, but a cold distance remains. She does not feel the joy of being amongst them anymore.
Lastly the 1Cwater 1D, smallpox, comes and wrecks havoc in the village. People flee everywhere, one from another. She hides away in a station of priests. As she comes back, smallpox gone, a great storytelling event takes place to welcome her, and she sits and wonders at this marvelous people, the way they take on life, at 1Cclose quarters with tragedy 1D, how they 1Clive with their own failure and yet laugh 1D. It is the laughter of people 1Cwho all know that they build on shifting sand (and) have yet the courage to build what they know will fall 1D, 1Cwho value love and friendship and plenty, who have lived terror and death and hate 1D.
1EReturn to laughter 1D is a great cultural journey, as it does not imply only immersion in another culture, but keeping 19s one 19s own identity and sense of self as well. She must have not lost herself in their midst, because if she had, she could have not ended her research 13 and who would she have been anyway? In her quest to understand them, and understanding them as well as she could, she had to keep her own culture 19s values as well, and how could she, some times, when they deeply contrasted? 1EReturn to laughter 1D is then a testimonial not only of the personal aspects of anthropological fieldwork, but also of the faces and complexity of identity and self.
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