Fisherman's Blues: A West African Community at Sea
by Anna Badkhen
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"An intimate account of life in a West African fishing village, tugged by currents ancient and modern, and dependent on an ocean that is being radically transformed. The sea is broken, fishermen say. The sea is empty. The genii have taken the fish elsewhere. For centuries, fishermen have launched their pirogues from the Senegalese port of Joal, where the fish used to be so plentiful a man could dip his hand into the grey-green ocean and pull one out as big as his thigh. But in an Atlantic show more decimated by overfishing and climate change, the fish are harder and harder to find. Here, Badkhen discovers, all boundaries are permeable--between land and sea, between myth and truth, even between storyteller and story. Fisherman's Blues immerses us in a community navigating a time of unprecedented environmental, economic, and cultural upheaval with resilience, ingenuity, and wonder"-- show lessTags
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36. Fisherman's Blues : A West African Community at Sea (audio) by Anna Badkhen
read by the author
published: 2018
format: 7:54 overdrive audio (304 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: June 8-19
rating: 4
Badkhen uses the phrase "like an itinerant storyteller" near the end of this book. A Russian born American whose books are about journeys through war zones, the African savanna and Afghanistan, this may have served as her self-description. In a poetic voice she does a complete immersive journalism, trying to become part of a Senegalese fishing village, invisibly of course. Except that she fails to become invisible, as she acknowledges. She does join these fisherman on their long fishing voyages in their rickety boats, hiring show more herself out and helping with the labor, getting very intimate with many of those around her, even as they see her always taking notes, and sometimes ask her to write things down for them.
This is a community on the edge, starved out of the Senegalese interior, they are still viewed as migrants some hundred years or so since they took to the sea, only to witness the fishing stock crash and continually diminish (she doesn't analyze too much, but the fisherman blame the large international fishing vessels with gigantic nets and no restrictions.) The community lives a precarious life where death is cheap, crews are lost, and bodies wash up routinely. They are surrounded by temporary unmarked graves which all seem to wash away eventually. And yet they are connected to the larger world in numerous ways, and many of the men she talks to have left Senegal to find work, usually illegally, in Spain and elsewhere, sometimes doing very well, sometimes just to be imprisoned.
I finished this book, which she reads herself, very much in it's thrall, very enchanted by everything she reported and sees. Yet, I notice a lot of negative reviews, and complaints about her prose. She writes in a thick poetic prose where the facts and the story come second to the atmosphere she is trying to create. And I suspect that the same discomfort readers tend to feel with poetry in general today crops up in these reviews. So, recommended to those with more poetic tastes.
2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6511044 show less
read by the author
published: 2018
format: 7:54 overdrive audio (304 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Library
listened: June 8-19
rating: 4
Badkhen uses the phrase "like an itinerant storyteller" near the end of this book. A Russian born American whose books are about journeys through war zones, the African savanna and Afghanistan, this may have served as her self-description. In a poetic voice she does a complete immersive journalism, trying to become part of a Senegalese fishing village, invisibly of course. Except that she fails to become invisible, as she acknowledges. She does join these fisherman on their long fishing voyages in their rickety boats, hiring show more herself out and helping with the labor, getting very intimate with many of those around her, even as they see her always taking notes, and sometimes ask her to write things down for them.
This is a community on the edge, starved out of the Senegalese interior, they are still viewed as migrants some hundred years or so since they took to the sea, only to witness the fishing stock crash and continually diminish (she doesn't analyze too much, but the fisherman blame the large international fishing vessels with gigantic nets and no restrictions.) The community lives a precarious life where death is cheap, crews are lost, and bodies wash up routinely. They are surrounded by temporary unmarked graves which all seem to wash away eventually. And yet they are connected to the larger world in numerous ways, and many of the men she talks to have left Senegal to find work, usually illegally, in Spain and elsewhere, sometimes doing very well, sometimes just to be imprisoned.
I finished this book, which she reads herself, very much in it's thrall, very enchanted by everything she reported and sees. Yet, I notice a lot of negative reviews, and complaints about her prose. She writes in a thick poetic prose where the facts and the story come second to the atmosphere she is trying to create. And I suspect that the same discomfort readers tend to feel with poetry in general today crops up in these reviews. So, recommended to those with more poetic tastes.
2018
https://www.librarything.com/topic/288371#6511044 show less
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Tour of Africa
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Author Information
8 Works 329 Members
Anna Badkhen has been writing about conflicts since 2001 for The New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, The Boston Globe, and other publications. She lives in Philadelphia.
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Common Knowledge
- Important places
- Senegal
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Hunting and Fishing
- DDC/MDS
- 307.76 — Society, Government, and Culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Communities Specific kinds of communities Urban communities
- LCC
- GT5904.5 .S38 .B33 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Manners and customs (General) Manners and customs (General) Customs relative to special classes By occupation
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 33
- Popularity
- 855,000
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
