Breathe To Read

Breathe To Read

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Read The World - Mayotte - Island in the Stream

 Book: Island In The Stream

Author: Michael Lambek

Pages: 376

Book takes place in the country: YES

Author is from the country: NO

I have visited: NO


This is my 16th read for the year

What Amazon Has to say about this book:
This book introdueces an original genra of ethnographic history as it follows a community on Mayotte, through eleven periods of fieldwork between 1975 and 2015.  Over this 40 year span Mayotte shifted from a declining and neglected colonial backwater to a full department of the French state.  In a highly unusual postcolonial trajectory, citizens of Mayotte demanded this incorporation within France rather than joining the independent republic of the Comoros.  The Malagasy-speaking Muslim villagers Michael Lambek encountered in 1975 practiced subsistence cultivation and lived without roads, schools, electriciy or running water.  Today they are educated citizens of the EU who travel regularly to metropolitan France and beyond.

This was a pretty good book about a country I knew nothing about.  I couldn't have even told you where it was on the map.  The author does a good job teaching us about the history of this tiny country, and considering its size - I was lucky to find such an indepth account,

Stars: 4










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