Ruth Behar-ethnographer, essayist, editor, and poet-is professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She gained national prominence with her book Translated Woman- Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story. Her honors include a MacArthur Fellows Award and a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship.
“Behar has convinced me that ethnographic empathy will produce an
anthropology that has greater meaning than the distanced and
detached academic anthropology of the past.“ —Barbara Fisher, The
Boston Globe
"Her luminous essays build cultural bridges and challenge
conventional ways of doing anthropology."—Publishers Weekly
"As 'a woman of the border' . . . [Behar] infuses her vision with
insight, candor and compassion." —Diane Cole, The New York Times
Book Review
"A story that engages the emotions. Making the past visible, she
preserves it against oblivion." —Stanley Trachtenberg, The
Washington Post Book World
"Behar's collection of essays assesses the impact of emotion and
experience on the process of research and writing, and on the
relationship between the observer and the observed. . . . Intensely
moving." —L. Beck, Choice
"In six strongly emotional essays, Behar makes a compelling case
for the importance of revealing 'the self who observes.'" —Anne
Valentine Martino, The Ann Arbor News
"[Her] insistent looking back is what makes Ruth Behar's vision of
anthropology so compelling. Memories do not vanish; they recede and
leave traces. The anthropologist who makes herself vulnerable to
these indications makes the world a more intelligible and hopeful
place." —Judith Bolton-Fasman, The Jerusalem Report
"Twenty years since its publication, I’m still recommending The
Vulnerable Observer to writers, colleagues, and friends. Just
as brave and profound as it was then, it is now, continuing to
offer insights into our shared humanity that are meaningful to
scholar, scientist, and poet alike."—Richard Blanco, inaugural poet
and author of For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey
"Behar has convinced me that ethnographic empathy will produce an
anthropology that has greater meaning than the distanced and
detached academic anthropology of the past." -Barbara Fisher,
The Boston Globe
"Her luminous essays build cultural bridges and challenge
conventional ways of doing anthropology."-Publishers
Weekly
"As 'a woman of the border' . . . [Behar] infuses her vision with
insight, candor and compassion." -Diane Cole, The New York Times
Book Review
"A story that engages the emotions. Making the past visible, she
preserves it against oblivion." -Stanley Trachtenberg, The
Washington Post Book World
"Behar's collection of essays assesses the impact of emotion and
experience on the process of research and writing, and on the
relationship between the observer and the observed. . . . Intensely
moving." -L. Beck, Choice
"In six strongly emotional essays, Behar makes a compelling case
for the importance of revealing 'the self who observes.'" -Anne
Valentine Martino, The Ann Arbor News
"[Her] insistent looking back is what makes Ruth Behar's vision of
anthropology so compelling. Memories do not vanish; they recede and
leave traces. The anthropologist who makes herself vulnerable to
these indications makes the world a more intelligible and hopeful
place." -Judith Bolton-Fasman, The Jerusalem Report
"Twenty years since its publication, I'm still recommending The
Vulnerable Observer to writers, colleagues, and friends. Just
as brave and profound as it was then, it is now, continuing to
offer insights into our shared humanity that are meaningful to
scholar, scientist, and poet alike."-Richard Blanco, inaugural poet
and author of For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's
Journey
Behar was filled with self-loathing and guilt when her grandfather died of cancer in Miami Beach in 1989 while she was away doing anthropological fieldwork on death customs in a Spanish village. That personal tragedy led this University of Michigan anthropology professor to jettison the notion of the anthropologist as semidetached participant-observer, and instead to champion the "vulnerable observer," the ethnographic fieldworker who spells out, and works through, his or her emotional involvement with the subject under study. These six impassioned, intensely personal essays exemplify this subjective approach to varying degrees, though less successfully than Behar did in Translated Woman, the life story of a Mexican street peddler. A Cuban Jew whose grandparents emigrated from Russia, Poland and Turkey in the 1920s, Behar moved to New York City with her family, fleeing Castro's communism, in 1962 when she was nearly five. In one searing essay she discusses the family's 1966 car accident which left her with a broken leg; an invalid for a year, she later recognized "the body is a homeland," a locus of stored memory and pain. Other pieces deal with her return trips to Cuba, her supportive friendship with a Mexican-American woman, her reconnecting with her Jewish heritage and her charged relationship with her husband and his white Methodist Texan family. Her luminous essays build cultural bridges and challenge conventional ways of doing anthropology. (Jan.)
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