The Forest People: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo

by Colin M. Turnbull

Paperback, 1962

Status

Available

Call number

306.089963

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Doubleday Anchor Books (1962), Mass Market Paperback, 305 pages

Description

The bestselling, classic text on one anthropologist's incredible experience living among the African Mbuti Pygmies, and what he learned from their culture, customs, and love of life. In this bestselling book, Colin Turnbull, a British cultural anthropologist, details the incredible Mbuti pygmy people and their love of the forest, and each other. Turnbull lived among the Mbuti people for three years as an observer, not a researcher, so he offers a charming and intimate firsthand account of the people and their culture, and especially the individuals and their personalities. The Forest People is a timeless work of academic and humanitarian significance, sure to delight readers as they take a trip into a foreign culture and learn to appreciate the joys of life through the eyes of the Mbuti people.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member berthirsch

This is a classic for the times. Written by a scholar and adventurer it tells the story of a small Pygmy tribe living in the Congo in the 1950's. It is a heartwarming tale with great insight and suspense.

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LibraryThing member carioca

The Forest People, by the late Turnbull, is probably required reading for any new student of Anthropology. Even though it borders on the romantic and some its flow is decisively novel-like, Turnbull's book was then a refreshing look into the culture of the Mbuti Pygmy, a marginalized and

little-understood group. I read this book during my first year of college, and together with Elizabeth Fernea's Guests of the Sheikh, it accounts for the beginning of my interest in ethnographic studies. Books like this one are truly like a window into another, completely foreign and utterly fantastic, world.

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LibraryThing member Ruecking

The life of the MaMbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest (Congo) as described by a young anthrologist who lived among the young men for 3 years during the 1950's. This book delightfully challenges the truths we may have found about families, nature and theology.

LibraryThing member BBcummings

Although written by an anthropologist, Colin Turnbull described the life of the Mbuti pygmies with such color, exuberance, detail and a healthy dash of humor that you cannot help but be entranced by this book. It reads like a novel, not a diary or journal. The author lived for three years with them

in the Ituri Forest in northwestern Belgian Congo (later Zaire, now DR of Congo). His affection for them is immediately apparent, and his intimate descriptions of individuals allow the reader to enjoy the characters in the book and their lives.

However, there are times when either the author is taking the mickey out of you, or else the Mbuti are taking the mickey out of him. When he takes a few of them on a drive out of the forest into the savanna where buffalo are grazing they wonder what kind of ants are those animals. The animals are far far away, but the people have never ever seen an open vista, so they assume the animals are very close. Good for a few chuckles, but not believable.

In any case, you won't be disappointed reading this book. Instead, you will feel like your are eating a delicious meal with a fine wine, a trip into another world that is almost certainly gone by now, 60 years on.

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LibraryThing member wickenden

African pygmys, attested in ancient Egyptian and Greek texts as being nearly mythical inhabitants of central Africa, are described here in an Anthropological tome. I must re-read as I remember little from it.

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