Nearly 80 now, Tobias Schneebaum recently traveled back to West New
Guinea, where he had lived off and on for over
two decades with the isolated Asmat people. He also went back to Peru,
where 40 years ago he lived with hidden tribes whose
story he told in the memorable Keep the River on Your Right.
Schneebaum is a right feisty old fellow, which comes through in
Secret Places, his candid exposition of his two lives: elderly,
Jewish, gay New Yorker and enthusiastic, self-taught social
anthropologist.
Schneebaum's modest yet passionate interlacing of both lives is at once
soothing and
celebratory, a cheery hop and a remarkable skip through a life of
constant exploration, of both the inner self and the ends of the earth.
In each world, so very far apart geographically and culturally, he finds
men to love
and who love him. In the Asmat rituals celebrating the dead he finds
parallels with the spirits of friends lost in the
early 1990s to AIDS. In each place he is at a restless, searching peace
with himself and with the souls who surround
him.
A particular pleasure of this combination memoir, travel journal, and
gay spirit guide (a wonderful
addition to the University of Wisconsin's "Living Out" series of lesbian
and gay autobiographies) is its compactness: in
just 160 pages, the author delivers a lifetime of learning and a
universe of wisdom.
-- Richard Labonté
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