Saamaka Dreaming

When Richard and Sally Price stepped out of the canoe to begin their fieldwork with the Saamaka Maroons of Suriname in 1966, they were met with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion, ambivalence, hostility, and fascination. With their gradual acceptance into the community they undertook the work that would shape their careers and influence the study of African American societies throughout the hemisphere for decades to come. In Saamaka Dreaming they look back on the experience, reflecting on a discipline and a society that are considerably different today. Drawing on thousands of pages of field notes, as well as recordings, file cards, photos, and sketches, the Prices retell and comment on the most intensive fieldwork of their careers, evoke the joys and hardships of building relationships and trust, and outline their personal adaptation to this unfamiliar universe. The book is at once a moving human story, a portrait of a remarkable society, and a thought-provoking revelation about the development of anthropology over the past half-century.

Richard Price taught for many years at Yale and Johns Hopkins University and is Professor Emeritus at the College of William and Mary. His numerous prize-winning books include Travels with Tooy: History, Memory, and the African American Imagination and Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial.

Sally Price has taught in the United States, France, and Brazil and is Professor Emerita at the College of William and Mary. Her studies of the place of “primitive art” in the imaginary of Western viewers include Primitive Art in Civilized Places and Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly. They have coauthored many books, including Romare Bearden: The Caribbean Dimension.