Mesoscope’s Reviews > Im Osten der Träume > Status Update

I don't think anyone could mistake this book for objectively-written or dispassionate. I don't disagree with that per se, but she does tend to systematically idealize things that interest her, particularly shamanism.

I honestly didn't think there was another take on the trickster motif out there that would be worth reading. I've probably read at least 15 different takes on it by now, but she's got something new.

Initial impression - Martin is extremely gifted as a field ethnographer and memoirist, but on shakier ground as a theorist. Like many anthropologists and sociologists, she seems to think that evidence of the porous nature of dichotomous categories means the whole edifice is naively reductive, and an arbitrary western construction.