Living With Cannibals And Other Womens Adventures - Hardcover

Slung, Michele

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0792276868 ISBN 13: 9780792276869

Publisher: National Geographic, 2000

Synopsis

Drawn from more than one hundred years of first-person narratives from the collection of the National Geographic Society, a collection of firsthand accounts documents the accomplishments of women explorers who ventured into the unknown, featuring contributions from astronaut Shannon Lucid, arctic explorer Helen Thayer, Victorian world traveler Isabella Bird Bishop, and others.

About this title

Review:

"The single most important discovery for women explorers may be the freedom that lies at the very act of exploration." It is fitting that the daughter of Anne Morrow Lindbergh pens the introduction to a collection that pays tribute to women adventurers from the 18th to the 21st centuries. In her foreword, Reeve Lindbergh reveals the intrinsic yearnings that unite the early female adventurers with their contemporary counterparts: the thrill of breaking new ground and the relief inherent in escaping restrictive societal boundaries.

Liberated from the dusty shelves of the National Geographic Society and bound in a slim, portable volume, these 16 snapshots profile daring women from past and present, pairing them according to their wayward desires ("The Call of the Arctic," "Down River," "Where the Air Is Thin"). Helen Thayer's solo trek to the North Pole in 1988 is particularly powerful: "The feel of the wind lashing my body and face without mercy, and a savage hunger and thirst combined to make me dig into a reservoir of strength.... I dug so deep that I came up with reserves I never knew I had."

In some cases, the accounts of the early pioneers are lacking in detail and correspondingly lack the punch of their contemporary counterparts, yet some, like the piece on Louise Arner Boyd, serve to highlight the freedom so treasured by brave independent adventurers:

Far north ... are lands that hold one spellbound. Gigantic imaginary gates with hinges set in the horizon seem to guard these lands. Slowly the gates swing open, and one enters another world where men are insignificant amid the awesome immensity of lonely mountains, fjords, and glaciers.

The adventure connoisseur may be frustrated by the brevity of some portraits as well as the brusqueness with which both tragedy and victory are conveyed. Ultimately, however, Living with Cannibals succeeds in fulfilling a greater purpose--to prop open the door for further explorations into the hearts of the world's most overlooked pioneers. --Daphne Durham

From Kirkus Reviews:

Drawing on the National Geographic archives, Slung (Murder and Other Acts of Literature, 1997, etc.) deftly highlights 16 noted women adventurers who climbed mountains, met with cannibals, and lived in space. A graceful introduction by Reeve Lindbergh suggests that these women's endeavors were explorations of the limitless inner spaces of the spirit that their journeys revealed to them as much as they were explorations of unknown external terrain. Women like the photographer and Arctic explorer Yva Momatiuk (stick me on a hill in the Arctic for a week and I'll be fulfilled) or the once-ailing Isabella Bird Bishop (who in the mid-1800s began traveling the globe, venturing as far north in the Canadian wilderness as Hudson Bay, and found that knocking about, open air life, in combination with sufficient interest, is the one in which my health and spirits are best). Divided into eight sections (each sharing such common themes as flight or exploration in Africa), the profiles range in time from the 18th century to the present--a range that is a pertinent reminder that the intrepid woman of spirit and curiosity is not merely a contemporary phenomenon. Slung introduces women like Austrian Ida Pfeiffer (who survived encounters with cannibals and headhunters in Borneo and Sumatra, and explored the Brazilian rain forest), French rock climber Catherine Destivelle (who has climbed the north face of the Eiger and the challenging Nameless Tower in the Karakorams), Shannon Lucid (who spent time on the Mir space station), Louise Arner Boyd (a wealthy debutante who explored and photographically documented the Arctic in the 1920s and '30s), and Florence Baker (a Hungarian who was rescued from slavery in Turkey and discovered a source of the Nile River with her husband Sam in the 1860s). Intriguing introductions to remarkable women that whet rather than satisfy the appetite. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: National Geographic
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0792276868
• ISBN 13: 9780792276869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256