Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America [Paperback]

Shari Caudron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 22, 2006

This book is highly entertaining, but it also provides significant insight into contemporary life in America. Caudron reveals why people are indulging in their fanatical passions, and how that indulgence is transforming community life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Subcultures that inspire rabid devotion--from Barbie collecting to ice fishing--are examined with wit and compassion. -- Entertainment Weekly, September 15, 2006

...A poignant exploration of what makes people tick, what community means these days, and why it's OK to love both Klingons and Christ. -- Jim Walsh, City Pages

If you're searching for the ideal nightstand book, then Who Are You People? may be for you. Funny yet poignant, the stories provide important insight into present-day life in America. -- Bette Erickson, Boulder Daily Camera

From the Publisher

An excerpt from WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? has received the Christine White Creative Nonfiction Award for excellence in literary journalism from Goucher College, home of the country's premiere creative nonfiction MFA program.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; 1St Edition edition (June 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569803048
• ISBN-13: 978-1569803042
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,306,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delightful and funny read!, July 27, 2006

By 

Paul Morris (Tempe, Arizona) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America (Paperback)

This is a delightful and funny read. The author takes us along on a journey to a series of odd and delightful social groups. We visit with rabid Josh Groban fans, stop at a Barbie doll convention, speed toward tornadoes with storm chasers, stroll with Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club and ponder pigeon racing.

What makes the book so likable is the sincere respect and wide-eyed curiosity the author has for each group she studies. It would have been easy (and tempting) to poke fun at these people but the writer resists. Instead, she probes deeper in her interviews and reveals profound motivations for why people need to connect with each other in these clubs and gatherings.

When we go to the Barbie convention, I was surprised to find a deeply moving story of a Barbie fanatic's recovery from devastating grief--a recovery that was based on the profound acts of caring and connection that she found through her membership in this group. (I'll never make fun of Barbie again!)

When Caudron asks, "Who are You People," we really know she's asking herself the question--who am I really? By the book's end, the writer has found new insights into these social groups and her own life.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a little confused, though it's meant to be..., September 6, 2006

By 

Mr. Richard K. Weems "emperor_weems" (Fair Lawn, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America (Paperback)

Do not get me wrong--I greatly enjoyed this book. I read through it very quickly, for I was thoroughly engrossed on most of topics she wrote about, but it seems to me that it didn't have the punch it could have had by the end. Perhaps this is because Shari Caudron decided on a primary angle of self-exploration with this book. This is a good choice to give the book structure--Caudron travels through the book as someone alien to the kind of passionate fanaticism she encounters. Perhaps she is trying to take an everyperson approach and take a viewpoint possibly more empathetic to the reader's.

But sometimes this approach gets a little in the way of things. The chapters on Barbie collectors and pigeon racers and especially the furries (more on that later) are nicely vivid, but the chapter on the avid board gamers felt a little empty--I came out of that one a little mystified as to how these games could be played for the marathon sessions she described. I just didn't get much insight into that arena.

But maybe I wasn't supposed to. Caudron's work is somewhat plot- (or character-) driven: our experience of the current fanatics she is dealing with reflects her own stage in this journey of self-discovery. The meeting with the Barbie collectors is somewhat fluffy and a light intro into the world of fanatics. Later, her time with the furries (people who attend conventions to connect to their animal natures and dress the part) connects to delving into the more dark and disturbing sides of fanaticism, a dark forest in the author's journey. With the gamers, Caudron was trying to express a feeling of removal, but in the process she removed the reader from the experience a little too much.

Perhaps this is what keeps me just slightly reserved about this book. Formally, it's very tight and well done. Caudron does delve a little into the psychology of fanaticism and the need to connect and be with others who share similar experiences, and there's an absolutely wonderful section about "silver-medal" attitude and how siulver-medal winners tend to be less happy people that bronze-medal winners, but these glimpses are brief, and soon the book reverts back to a kind of travel-logue to meet eccentrics. Caudron stayed so close to her self-discovery theme that I think she may have kept the book from developing in the other directions it could have taken.

I would be most interested to see Caudron take the knowledge gained form this book and then find another niche of driven people, perhaps artists or professional wrestlers, people who do what they do in obscurity for the most part, and explore the connections derived from such devotion.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Passionate Hobbyists, September 22, 2006

By 

D. L. Barnett (Paradise, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America (Paperback)

Denver-based freelance journalist Shari Caudron, once a reporter for the Enterprise-Record, is a Chico State University graduate and a former communications director of the Chico Chamber of Commerce.

Caudron admits to being a dabbler. In her 20s "I hooked up with a group of pagan, Mother-Earth, goddess-worshipping feminists. I became a vegetarian. I bought Tarot Cards. I attended week-long festivals in Yosemite National Park with topless 'womyn' who chanted, wore crystals, believed in past lives."

That lasted about a year. Then she took up running, followed by "backpacking, Buddhism, Scrabble, snowshoeing, bridge, belly dancing, golf, gardening, fencing, piano and an abundant amount of non-professional, highly unstructured wine tasting." Though Angela, her partner of more than a decade, was big-time into dogs (well, dog-sledding), none of her other friends had any "singular, all-consuming interest."

So, asked Caudron, where was the passion? She discovered a wealth of passionate special-interest hobby groups online and decided to report on some of them, at the same time trying to discover what they had that she didn't.

She begins with the National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention in Denver, moves on to the Three Lakes Ice Fishing Contest in Granby, Colo.; pigeon-racing in New York; the World Boardgaming Championships in Baltimore; the annual Mayberry Days Festival in Mount Airy, N.C.; a meet-up with the Grobanites, rabid, mostly middle-aged female followers of young singer Josh Groban (one observer said they were "like a post-modern menopausal version of the Deadheads"); and a science-fiction convention in Illinois.

She also tracks tornados with storm chasers in Kansas and attends the Califur Conference at the Holiday Inn in Costa Mesa, at which participants ("followers of furry fandom" who find a certain eroticism in the anthropomorphic representation of animals) often dress up in animal costumes (like Disney characters) or even surgically alter their faces to look more like animals.

It's all about the people. Everywhere she goes Caudron meets social misfits who have found others just as passionate about, say, Legos or Otis the Mayberry town drunk and who fit right in. Though never sharing those passions, Caudron does admit that, for example, "these Mayberry fans are teaching me what it feels like to be fully yourself without apologies."

Later in the book the author investigates the historical sources of hobby passion and looks at its psychological and even genetic basis. There have been "50 years of socially approved fun combined with 30 years of self-absorbed self-interest, 20 years of wealth, 10 years of online connectivity, (and) five years of social trepidation," as even one's neighbors are less trusted than your own group of like-minded Barbie Doll collectors or filk singers ("filk" is a folk song with a science-fiction theme) or pigeon racers. Some years ago the book "Bowling Alone" suggested the unraveling of community in the United States; Caudron finds community alive and well in passionate hobbyists.

In her quest to find her own single-minded obsession, Caudron is often funny and self-deprecating, and in her sometimes salty accounts of "passionate fanatics" she finds at long last what she is really looking for. Herself.

Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.