In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull

by Roy Richard Grinker

What Margaret Mead did for Samoa, Colin Turnbull did for Africa. An upper class Oxford-educated Englishman, Turnbullâ s life-long love affair with the African Pygmies made him one of the most famous intellectuals of the 1960s and â 70s. In an intimate portrait of a remarkable man--at various times a gold-miner, builder of â The African Queen,â and anti-death penalty advocate--Grinker describes how Turnbull fell in love with a beautiful but poor African American named Joe Towles who became as much Turnbulâ s heroic creation as did the Pygmies. For 30 years, they lives as an openly gay, interracial couple in New York City and rural Virginia until Joeâ s death of AIDS in 1988. Devastated, Turnbull buried his own spirit in a second coffin laid next to Towles, gave away most of his money, and until his own death from AIDS in 1994, lived as a Buddhist monk tutored by the Dalai Lamaâ s eldest brother. This is a compelling story of a celebrity scholar, his sexuality and his passion for a fiercely lived life.

Genres: Africa, Ethnography, Nonfiction, Biography, Queer

368 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

B. 1961

Professor of Anthropology, International Affairs, and Human Sciences at The George Washington University.

Grinker is an authority on North and South Korean relations. As part of his PhD research, he spent two years living with the Lese farmers and the Efé pygmies in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a Fulbright scholar. He has also conducted epidemiological research on autism in Korea.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. It focuses more on him being a homosexual and his sex life than anything I actually wanted to read about.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good biography about a complicated man. Personally, I would have preferred more about his professional life and less about his love affair with his partner Joseph, but that's just me and doesn't alter the quality of the research and the writing.

[Femi Kush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Autobiography of a man who paid attention to the environment he found himself in the region of Central Africa. Although, I would have enjoyed it more if the book elucidate more about the interesting culture of the Pygmies.

[Lirazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

An interesting, well-researched biography of a fascinating and singular person.

I see some other reviews complaining about how there's not enough about Turnbull's work here. But the title is very clearly "the life of" and not "the life and works of." Turnbull framed his life and edited his papers in such a way that they would focus on the thing he thought most important: his relationship with his husband Joe. I thought that Grinker managed to keep that focus while also exploring aspects of Turnbull's life and personality that he was really not very self-aware about.

Turnbull was...complicated. As a biographer, Grinker leans into that complication and does not flinch awayfrom it. He's certainly not trying to write an unbiased, objective biography, but then that would be entirely inappropriate for Turnbull who rejected the idea of objectivity altogether. Grinker has a particular set of lenses through which he examines Turnbull, some of which Turnbull would have agreed with, others he certainly would have rejected. In this sense, the biography reflects Turnbull's work and his understanding of his own life, which were very consciously filtered through his own conscious and unconscious lenses.

In another context, I think it would have been inappropriate for Grinker to so explicitly draw the connections he does between, say, the way the relationship between the Mbuti and the villagers Turnbull wrote about ended up paralleling his relationship with Joe. But because Turnbull is the subject, it works.

[Lgordo · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be fair, I'll start by saying that I read this in the hope of learning about the Mbuti, not Colin Turnbull. Instead, I learned about anthropology and anthropologists. It led me down a rabbit-hole that ended in watching the documentary Ikland, and has made me doubt the entire field of anthropology.

All that aside, this book is about Colin Turnbull, a deeply flawed and erratic man who nonetheless made an impressive life and legacy for himself. Stories like these highlight how people are both the cause and effect of their own basic unhappiness. I found myself skimming toward the end because it wasn't what I'd wanted to read, but kept getting drawn back in by the sordid details of his existence.

[Poncho Plum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colin Turnbull was an anthropologist; but from reading this bio he comes across more as a sex worker.

[Yan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I had Prof. Grinker for an introductory anthropology course and another more advanced course; I loved both courses.

This book does an amazing job of giving context to Turnbull. The disparity in his impressions of both the Ik from 'The Mountain People' and the Mbutu from 'The Forest People' makes a lot more sense having read this book. The story behind its writing is also very moving, to hear the professor tell it.

It's a great look at a famous ethnographer (or, including the author, maybe two famous ethnographers), the process, and some of the biases. It's also a very compelling story, and I would recommend this book to both the casual and serious reader of ethnography alike.

[Suanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating biography of an unorthodox anthropologist and his tortured personal life.