'Tambo: Life in an Andean VillagePerhaps the best way to sharpen one's power's of observation is to be a stranger in a strange land. Julia Meyerson was one such stranger during a year in the village of 'Tambo, Peru, where her husband was conducting anthropological fieldwork. Though sometimes overwhelmed by the differences between Quechua and North American culture, she still sought eagerly to understand the lifeways of 'Tambo and to find her place in the village. Her vivid observations, recorded in this field journal, admirably follow Henry James's advice: "Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost." With an artist's eye, Meyerson records the daily life of 'Tambo—the cycles of planting and harvest, the round of religious and cultural festivals, her tentative beginnings of friendship and understanding with the Tambinos. The journal charts her progress from tolerated outsider to accepted friend as she and her husband learn and earn, the roles of daughter and son in their adopted family. With its wealth of ethnographic detail, especially concerning the lives of Andean women, 'Tambo will have great value for students of Latin American anthropology. In addition, scholars preparing to do fieldwork anywhere will find it a realistic account of both the hardships and the rewards of such study. |
From inside the book
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... Daniel is gone . The Quechua word they use to tell us about it is chinkay : to disappear or to be lost . We left ' Tambo on the twenty - first of December . On Christmas morn- ing , Daniel left home . When he woke that morning he ...
... Daniel was in Cusco . She told the whole story to Baltazar , who recounted it to us in Spanish that evening : Daniel and his cousin had gone to Quillabamba to work and had just returned to Cusco . The other boy came back to ' Tambo , but ...
Life in an Andean Village Julia Meyerson. " Daniel's home ! " and Teodoro's face brightened into an immediate smile which lasted only for a moment before he caught himself and then went back and leaned next to Daniel against the bed at ...