Ethnographers have long struggled with a dilemma inherent to our fieldwork methodology: How can we represent the voices of our consultant with coherence yet with integrity, realizing that it is highly unlikely that any two of those to whom we speak will have precisely the same interpretation of any given event? Solutions to the dilemma have been to present the ethnographer’s voice as authority, to privilege the voices(s) of the consultants(s), to attempt to blend voices into normative statements, or to interpret based on a consolidation of natives’ and ethnographers’ voices. Gottlieb and Graham present an unique solution to the dilemma: to allow the differing voices to be heard in harmony, in dissonance, contrapuntally, as well as I solo.

Their book, Parallel Worlds, this year’s choice for the victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing, signs, whether the voice is that of Alma, Philip, or one of their consultants. Not only is the anthropology engagingly presented, but also the writing is exquisite, even when the subject matter does not present Gottlieb or Graham in a glowing light. Theirs is a book that succeeds both in terms of literary and ethnographic writing. The Beng are seen as real people while the Gottlieb-Graham relationship is also revealed; that relationship is an important part of how the ethnographer (Gottlieb) and the creative writer (Graham) perceive and interpret their West African experiences.

Readers are fortunate that the parallel worlds of Gottlieb, Graham, and the Beng people often intersect at particular way-station events or interpretations of life. Were their worlds totally parallel, readers would be left with no syntheses with which to begin to understand the beauty and trails of Beng life. But with the skilled, evocative writing-whether the pen had been dipped into Graham’s or Gottlieb’s ink well- readers may experience the full panoply of ethnographic fieldwork, in its glory and nastiness, in its joy and sorrow, in its satisfaction and embarrassment, in its poignancy and humor. This is ethnographic writing as it should be done.

-- Claire R. Farrer