A Red Woman Was Crying

<p>Don Mitchell's new collection of short stories set among tribal people on Bougainville Island in the late 1960s demystifies ethnography by turning it on its head. The narrators are Nagovisi - South Pacific rainforest cultivators - and through their eyes the reader comes to know the young American anthropologist himself struggling with his identity as a Vietnam-era American who's come to to study their culture in a time of change. Beautifully written evocative and utterly original A Red Woman was Crying takes the reader into the rich and complex internal lives of Nagovisi -- young and old male and female gentle and fierce -- as they grapple with predatory miners indifferent colonial masters missionaries their own changing culture their sometimes violent past and the "other" who has come to live with them.</p>