The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky [Paperback]

Ellen Meloy (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 8, 2003

In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise—the color and the gem—to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape.

From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo “velvet grandmothers” whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Exquisitely rendered. . . . Meloy’s gem-studded collection calls us to be mindful of the physical world, to see it—really see it—with fresh eyes.” —Los Angeles Times

“Meloy’s vision of the world through turquoise-colored glasses is a unique, moving, self-effacing delight.” —The Washington Post

“By the time you lift your eyes from the last page, you’ll be longing to clasp a piece of stone, to be surrounded by blue water. . . . Powerful and transporting—and funny.” —The Times-Picayune

“Finely crafted, vigorously descriptive, dazzling in its insights into biology and culture.” —Booklist

“[Meloy] crafts potent meditations on the desert landscape. . . . The Anthropology of Turquoise explores Meloy’s beloved Southwest—a region she knows intimately and describes with her trademark sharp wit.” —Salt Lake Tribune

“Amusing and intelligent . . . the talented Meloy is a Southwestern voice to listen to.” —Santa Fe New Mexican

“Smart, evocative, and memorable: Nature-writing done right." —Kirkus (starred review)

“Combine[s] the best of travel writing with fascinating slices of history in an irresistible invitation to open our eyes and our minds, taking beauty where we find it.” —Kingston Springs Advocate

“Diverse, thoughtful, and humorous.” —Albuquerque Journal

“A book of great beauty under which lies a drumbeat of grief and passion for the desert. Meloy is a perfect, often hilarious guide. Trust her on any river. There are images in this book I will never forget.” —Nora Gallagher, author of Practicing Resurrection

From the Back Cover

“Exquisitely rendered. . . . Meloy’s gem-studded collection calls us to be mindful of the physical world, to see it—really see it—with fresh eyes.” —Los Angeles Times

“Meloy’s vision of the world through turquoise-colored glasses is a unique, moving, self-effacing delight.” —The Washington Post

“By the time you lift your eyes from the last page, you’ll be longing to clasp a piece of stone, to be surrounded by blue water. . . . Powerful and transporting—and funny.” —The Times-Picayune

“Finely crafted, vigorously descriptive, dazzling in its insights into biology and culture.” —Booklist

“[Meloy] crafts potent meditations on the desert landscape. . . . The Anthropology of Turquoise explores Meloy’s beloved Southwest—a region she knows intimately and describes with her trademark sharp wit.” —Salt Lake Tribune

“Amusing and intelligent . . . the talented Meloy is a Southwestern voice to listen to.” —Santa Fe New Mexican

“Smart, evocative, and memorable: Nature-writing done right." —Kirkus (starred review)

“Combine[s] the best of travel writing with fascinating slices of history in an irresistible invitation to open our eyes and our minds, taking beauty where we find it.” —Kingston Springs Advocate

“Diverse, thoughtful, and humorous.” —Albuquerque Journal

“A book of great beauty under which lies a drumbeat of grief and passion for the desert. Meloy is a perfect, often hilarious guide. Trust her on any river. There are images in this book I will never forget.” —Nora Gallagher, author of Practicing Resurrection

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (July 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375708138
• ISBN-13: 978-0375708138
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #329,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Colors are the deeds and sufferings of light - Johann Wolfg October 30, 2004

By Allan M. Gathercoal

Format:Paperback

There are three reasons to possess this book. The first reason: You want to read an author whose prose verges on poetry... "On the Colorado Plateau... nights come less as a smooth pause than as a steep, enduring purity of eye-blind dark. (In the day) The mesa's colors in their flanks - terra cotta, blood-red salmon, vermilion - bear the temperament of iron."

Second: Color for you, as for flowers, are a part of your being. You draw colors into your life as an elixir to defeat life's monotony. Ellen Meloy is a master wordsmith. She, more than most, knows that colors "challenge language to encompass them", yet, unabashedly, she tracks down the colors of nature, feels them, tastes them, holds them in her mind and then vividly gives them life. No color is sacrosanct to her. Yes, orange, red, blue, green will all find an expression, but Meloy seeks, not the plebeian, but the unusual, unique, even ruthless colors: burnt sienna, magenta, burgundy red, Prussian blue and of course turquoise, "the stone of the desert," "the color of yearning,". For Meloy; "Colors bear the metaphors of entire cultures. They convey every sensation from lust to distress. Flowers use colors ruthlessly for sex. Moths steal them from their surroundings and disappear. A cactus spines glows red-gold in the angle of sun, like an electrocuted aura." Life is good.

Finally, you will find in Ellen Meloy a forthright lover of nature. She is a south westerner, lover of the desert and outdoors woman who sees in desert life the paradoxes of being. She calls for attention as she expresses the damage to the earth that we are so thoughtlessly committing. She points out how we, Homo sapiens, are the first species to witness and will our own extinction. Her social - naturalist commentary is balanced with humor and memoirs; her narrative is both captivating and informative. She is at her best when she sticks to the southwest, but the chapters that chronicle her forays to the Bahamas and the Yucatan are nonetheless engaging. This is a well-crafted work that is filled with captivating metaphors, naturalism, travelogue, memoirs and humor. If you seek award winning writing, are captivated by colors and find sustenance in the natural world this is a highly recommended read. 4.5 stars

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Loss to Literature November 14, 2004

By Kevin Killian HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

Did this ever happen to you, you close the pages of a well-written book and you just sigh for a minute, wishing it had not ended? And then as it happens you open up your daily newspaper and find out that the author has died, died even perhaps as you were reading and admiring her prose style? I first read "Swimming in Mojave" two years ago in the magazine ORION, and I laughed out loud thinking of the author trying to beat the desert heat by swimming across the sands, like a John Cheever character, in every swimming pool at every motel and resort her family could find. Recently I found this book, THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF TURQUOISE, and settled in for the pleasure of a whole collection of essays, and some well-researched bits of historical fact and fancy about the mineral turquoise, another hobby of mine.

The book took me over two weeks to finish, as I kept putting it down to admire the author's flights of fancy and beautiful language. There wasn't much of a story, but as I read it now, and think about the different essays from The "Deeds and Sufferings of Light" to the final chapters of "Brides of Place" and "Passing through Green to Reach It," I see so clearly how her words speak to the drive in every one who lives out West to stay alive and to see the possibility and grandeur in all of the things God or the Devil created. Ellen Meloy has left us, but she has left us with a magnificent charge, to go into the world unafraid and to urge the others to "You come, too."

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing insight into the natural world May 12, 2004

By Suez

Format:Paperback

Enthusiastic Recommend: The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy
I finished this book sitting in my camp chair on the edge of Capital Reef National Park - on the side of Boulder Mountain looking into the vista of the water pocket fold and the Henry Mountains. It was four days after I ran a half marathon, and I was decompressing on a camping trip. The scenery was amazing, Meloy's writing just as good.
Meloy lives not all that far from where I was sitting, in what I would call an "outpost of nowhere" in southern Utah on what she calls the "salsa farm beside the river." She's a desert rat with a keen sense of surroundings and life.
Her book is about a lot of things; it's a collection of essays loosely tied by the idea of turquoise - the color and the rock. But the essays that spoke to me were the ones about the land, the desert southwest and the creatures, plant and animal, that inhabit it. Meloy can bring you inside a flower, near a big horn sheep, into the river, out into the night sky. She made me ache to be part of the natural world, her desert world. Her prose is poetic. Here's a taste. This is what she writes about the river that is so deeply engrained in her soul when she finds herself swimming after her boat: "What happens when I surrender to the aloof, silken creature that hurls me down its spine?" Again, about her river: "I write a book about a river and cannot tell if it's a love story or an obituary or both."
She cares deeply about her land. And she also writes about writing: "Writers write because they can't shut up." This resonated. I have found my voice in my fifth decade of life. But I have also found other voices, voices like Meloy's that are worth shutting up to hear.