Trickster
An Anthropological Memoir
Description:... "A real page turner. Kane has turned her first fieldwork experience into an engaging `Margaret Mead meets Tony Hillerman' narrative, with vivid characters, many tricksters, and even a mysterious death."---Louise Lamphere, Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of New Mexico and past president of the American Anthropological Association
"Trickster...should become essential reading for young anthropologists, if only because of its ruminations about the discipline as theory and praxis."---Michael Hittman, Long Island University
"Kane avoids stilted ethnographic prose and instead revels in a self-effacing, first-person narrative that is richly textured, beautifully written, moving, and hilarious---precisely the kind of yarn that grabs and holds the attention of students and seasoned anthropologists alike."---Liam D. Murphy, California State University, Sacramento
"A must read for every scholar who aspires to bring intellectual work to bear on the problems of real people and their communities."---Louis S. Warren, University of California, Davis
A few weeks ago, I saw little Earl in a Sioux bonnet, shouting, "Look at me! I'm a Indian!" We share a history of manufactured identities, the Palutes and the Youngstown Irish-Americans.
A young trainee anthropologist leaves her violent Mafia-run hometown---Youngstown, Ohio---to study an "exotic" group, the Paiute Indians of Nevada. This is 1964; she'll be "the expert," and they'll be, "the subjects." The Paiute elders have other ideas. They'll be "the parents." They set themselves two tasks: to help her get a good grade off her project and to send her home quickly to her new bridegroom. They dismiss her research topic and introduce her to their spirit creature, the outrageously mischievous rule-breaking trickster, Coyote.
Why do the Paiutes love Coyote? Why do Youngstown mill workers vote for Mafia candidates for municipal office? Tricksters become key to understanding how oppressed groups function in a hostile world. For more information visit www.trickster.ie
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