Product Description

The Forest People -- Colin M. Turnbull's best-selling, classic work -- describes the author's experiences while living with the BaMbuti Pygmies, not as a clinical observer, but as their friend learning their customs and sharing their daily life.

Turnbull conveys the lives and feelings of the BaMbuti whose existence centers on their intense love for their forest world, which, in return for their affection and trust, provides their every need. We witness their hunting parties and nomadic camps; their love affairs and ancient ceremonies -- the molimo, in which they praise the forest as provider, protector, and deity; the elima, in which the young girls come of age; and the nkumbi circumcision rites, in which the villagers of the surrounding non-Pygmy tribes attempt to impose their culture on the Pygmies, whose forest home they dare not enter.

The Forest People eloquently shows us a people who have found in the forest something that makes their life more than just living -- a life that, with all its hardships and problems and tragedies, is a wonderful thing of happiness and joy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27184 in Books
• Published on: 1987-07-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780671640996
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
From the Foreword by Harry L. Shapiro Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History The book is exceptional....The reader can enter into...the exhilaration of participating in a culture other than his own....Reading The Forest People is an unusual and satisfying experience. -- Review

Review
Margaret MeadAdds an entirely new dimension to literature on primitive people. The book is constructed with great dexterity, so that the reader is carried along by the charm and movement of the narrative, almost unaware of the underpinning of arduous scientific field work that lies like bedrock below....The reader feels sheer delight in an entirely new world.

From the Foreword by Harry L. ShapiroDepartment of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural HistoryThe book is exceptional....The reader can enter into...the exhilaration of participating in a culture other than his own....Reading The Forest People is an unusual and satisfying experience.

About the Author
Colin M. Turnbull was born in London, and now lives in Connecticut. He was educated at Westminster School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied philosophy and politics. After serving in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during World War II, he held a research grant for two years in the Department of Indian Religion and Philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, in India, and then returned to Oxford, where he studied anthropology, specializing in the African field.

He has made five extended field trips to Africa, the last of which was spent mainly in the Republic of Zaïre. From these trips he drew the material for his first book, The Forest People, an account of the three years he spent with the Pygmies of Zaïre.

Mr. Turnbull was a Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He is a Research Associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Corresponding Member of Le Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale.

Customer Reviews

SURRENDER YOURSELF INTO ITS MAGIC
I first read The Forest People when I was in college. I took an anthropology course, and I was absolutely enchanted by this book.

First of all, do not fear that this book is written by an anthropologist using dry and boring langauge and tried everything to stay objective thus being an impassion observer. This is not a book filled with statistics and boring observations and theories.

No, Turnbull described the life of the Mbuti pygmies with such color, exuberance, detail and a healthy dash of humour that you cannot help but just being entranced by this book. You will learn of their daily lives, their hissy fits with each other, their methods of punishment, their relationship with the "negro" villagers whom they think are animals because they do not understand the forest. You will see their marriage rites, the rituals of the Molimo and the celebration of the Elima, when young pygmy girls are first "blessed" by menstrual blood.

You will see the pygmies as individuals each with his or her own personality....Kenge the author's best friend, Moke an elderly and respected member of the Mbuti, Cephu the "bad hunter", beautiful Kidaya of the elima, who , Kondabate the pygmy belle who filed her teeth like a shark's, flirtatious Akidinimba with her infamously huge bosoms, "ugly" Aberi, Kamaikan, Kelemoke and even Amina, the daughter of a sub-chief from a nearby village. You will get to know them and feel as if you have known them all your lives.

The Forest People is one of the best books EVER written on anthropology. You can't help but think about how life, as simple as it seems for the pyymies, is still fill with both joy and tribulations. I have read this book many times and every time it still have not lost its magic on me.

This book was written in the 1960s. Turnbull have since passed away. I cannot help but think about what happaned to all these wonderful people we meet in the book today. Did Kenge have any children since? Did Kondabate ever had a child? Did Akidinimba stayed married?

I just wish that there's a sequel to this wonderful book.

A review on The Forest People by Colin Turnbull.

Colin Turnbull, the late English born Anthropologist and writer was the first to be able to study the pygmies of Africa first hand. The first to be accepted and befriended by these mysterious and beautiful people of the African Congo. In The Forest People Turnbull recalls his experience of living hidden within the forest with a family group of pygmies. He tells us the wearisome struggle that the pygmies battle for to protect thier culture and home. Turnbull also looks deeply into thier way of life and uncovers for us a world of playfullness and enchanting spiritualism. He teaches us the vital part that the rainforest itself plays in the pygmy's existance and also the holiness of all nature. This book was a delight to read and opened my eyes to the pure world that we live on but that is rarely seen.

A good story with a few flaws
I really liked this book. I had to read it for class, but i would recomend it to anyone. It was quick and easy to read. It was a good and sympathetic portrayal of these hunter gatherer peoples and it left me with a lot of respect for them and for the author.

There were only a couple of little things I would have changed about the book. I felt like a little too much had been edited out in some spots and the author was a little over sentamental at times. For my purposes i would have liked a little more of a scientific approach to some things, but it does make a very good story overall.