By John Borneman
Foreword by Frédéric Keck
John Borneman’s memoir of his life as an accidental anthropologist is a work of searing honesty, humor, and emotional depth. It tells the unlikely story of how the youngest of eight children raised on a family farm in northern Wisconsin, by parents who had only half of a grammar school education, became an equestrian then an Ivy League professor who lived through transformative world events in Europe and in the Middle East. It explores his journey as a queer farmboy with low expectations who later experienced a bewildering assortment of communities––from rural Wisconsin to divided Berlin, to the souks of Aleppo, and back to Berlin again as Syrians arrived there. An account of metamorphosis, of navigating change while embracing transformation, it is a remarkable portrayal of the work of interpersonal anthropology.
“This brave, witty, and vivid memoir of the journeys of a soul-searching anthropologist will appeal to all readers interested in how we find meaning in the map of memory as we look back on the intersection of our lives and the eruptions of history.”
— Ruth Behar, author of The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
“In this rich and triumphant ethnographic memoir rooted in the American settler heartland, John Borneman narrates his journey of queer becoming. Like a life travelogue of the country and world, from the Cold War era to the present, Borneman’s descriptions of touching, adventurous encounters with kin and kith of all kinds reveal how the beauty of ordinary curiosity can incite class, national, and sexual consciousness. In all, a moving retrospective that will inspire many readers.”
— Casey Golomski, author of God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End
John Borneman is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and the author of many books based on fieldwork in Central Europe and in the Middle East.
Frédéric Keck is a Senior Researcher at CNRS, author of How French Moderns Think: The Lévy-Bruhl Family, From “Primitive Mentality” to Contemporary Pandemics and Avian Reservoirs: Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts, and coeditor of The Anthropology of Pandemics.