Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters: The Early Years (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: darling family, valerie jane, chimpanzee reserve, Jane Goodall, National Geographic, Louis Leakey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Africa may not always have been in Jane Goodall's blood, but animals were there right from the start: the list of recipients in what one hopes is only the first volume of her letters includes Dido the dog and Pickles the cat. And this is no flight of editorial fantasy. Goodall always accorded these members of her "darlingest family" their proper place alongside such correspondents as her mother, her father, her best friend, and her mentor, Louis Leakey (a.k.a. FFF, Foster Fairy Father). Africa in My Blood opens with 7-year-old Valerie Jane's encounters with various canines (real and porcelain) as well as signs of incipient naturalism--she has found "a ded rook he died of cold" and is caretaking a "catepiler." In the same communiqué, she also notes that her toy chimp has a new dress. Goodall would later prefer her primates au naturel but would continue to balance her urge for living taxonomy with love and empathy.

Culled from more than 16,000 letters, this collection will inspire Goodall adepts and those coming upon her for the first time. Her "autobiography in letters" restores this icon to full, even frivolous, humanity. It also recalls a lost era of inspired amateurism. When she went off to Nairobi at 23 in the spring of 1957, Goodall had no formal scientific training. Yet within weeks she had met Leakey and was soon working with him, not to mention rebuffing his advances, though she assures her mother that "he's much too fond of me for any monkey business."

Meanwhile, they had already discussed monkey business of a higher sort. "There is the vaguest possible chance that little me," Goodall wrote, "may have the chance to go right out into the wilds of the Northern Frontier for two or 3 months to study a strange tribe of chimpanzees who may be a new species, or sub-species. That is too heavenly to even think about." By the summer of 1960, Goodall was installed at the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve (which she soon termed Chimpland). And over the next year, she made four key discoveries, if not more, and was proving herself the zoological equal of such masters as George Schaller, having documented her subjects eating meat as well as using tools with ease.

Africa in My Blood reminds us that Goodall was once a controversial rather than hallowed figure, her methodology viewed with suspicion and condescension. And as many of us happily vegetate in front of televised slices of animal life, her awareness of her privileged position puts things in perspective. In early 1961, Goodall recounts a complex ritual and then asks her family: "Can you begin to imagine how I felt? The only human ever to have witnessed such a display, in all its primitive, fantastic wonder?"

Because Goodall has written so elegantly and incisively on chimpanzee behavior in, for instance, In the Shadow of Man and Through a Window, some readers might initially be tempted to gloss over her descriptions of such animals as the venerable David Greybeard and expert towel thief William and concentrate on her own persona--teasing, hyper-enthusiastic, and absolutely determined. When her project is threatened in 1963, she implores FFF: "You would fall head over heels in love with all my darlings--never, never think that I will let anything happen to them through what I am doing. I KNOW it is right. I KNOW that I can work the Reserve the way it must. I KNOW that I shall come back here time and time again until the problems that remain are hardly worth mentioning." Africa in My Blood makes it clear that, as Jane Goodall has long stressed, human and ape cannot be separated. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

No one, perhaps, has done more for great apes than Goodall, whose decades of work with Kenyan chimpanzees showed the rest of the world how chimps live--how they use tools, eat, sleep, have sex, raise their young, fight, make peace--demonstrating that they deserve further study as well as human protection. Here, in a follow-up to last year's spiritual autobiography Reason for Hope, are displayed the roots of that work, in a thick, fun, enlightening, somewhat diffuse compilation of letters that Goodall wrote to relatives, friends and colleagues over the first 32 years of her life, now amplified by Peterson's introduction and annotations. The earliest letters show the preteen Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall at school in England, chattily inviting her best friend to see her collection of "quite a lot of caterpillars." Later batches describe life in "Chimpland," where Goodall and her co-workers have set up their ongoing project. We see a mother chimp and her neighbors react to a baby; we also see Goodall, then-husband Hugo van Lawick and a cast of dozens handle the practical problems of running a jungle encampment, from parasites to postage and publicity. Goodall describes her work with her mentor, paleontologist Louis Leakey; shows her continued affection for her family; keeps up with U.S. and European animal-behavior researchers such as Konrad Lorenz; and narrates "the proudest [day] of my whole life to date": the chimpanzee "David G--yes--he has TAKEN BANANAS FROM MY HAND." This volume covers only the "early years" (1934-1966); readers who care about animal behavior--or who enjoy the collected letters of a fascinating, friendly and dedicated woman--will hope for a sequel. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 22, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618127356
• ISBN-13: 978-0618127351
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #244,247 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 1 in The Goodall Letters Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sit by the Firelight in Africa at Midnight with Jane Goodall, December 31, 2000

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Africa in My Blood : An Autobiography in Letters (Hardcover)

The letters in this collection date from Ms. Goodall's youth through 1966, when her stature as a scientist was well established based on her pioneering research in Africa.

Books of letters are normally associated with great female authors of novels, such as Virginia Woolf. In those wonderful volumes, beautiful style and playful use of words adds joy to one's appreciation of the literary works themselves.

So, I did not know what to expect from a book of Jane Goodall's letters. What I found was a most pleasant surprise. The letters provide a deep perspective into the personality of Ms. Goodall and how that contributed to the development of the research methods she used. I found the letters fascinating and very rewarding, despite the fact that they are the opposite of high literary style.

If you are like me, you may primarily know Jane Goodall from her National Geographic television specials. Those were very accessible and enjoyable. But I did not know the background concerning how her pioneering research with chimpanzees was initiated and developed. This book wonderfully filled in that background. Also, I did not know how an attractive young Englishwoman came to become a field scientist in Africa in the first place. Also, the shows made it all seem rather natural and easy.

First, you will come away impressed with what a devoted correspondent she was. Over 16,000 letters were found by the editor to draw from. Now, how many letters have you written in your life? Also, these are mostly long, newsy letters to family, friends, and professional colleagues. If she had been a book reviewer, no one would have believed her production. Remember that she had no computer to help her draft the letters. In fact, she had the balkiest manual typewriters imaginable.

What was even more remarkable to me was that so many of her early letters had been saved. How many letters have you saved from people under the age of 15? That these letters are available is quite a testimony to her relationships with these people, and the impact of her personality.

Then, I did not know that she was a secretarial school graduate when she went to Africa. A few jobs quickly convinced her that she was not cut out for indoor work. She was eventually accepted into a Ph.D. program without ever having attended college! In fact, she had done most of her breakthrough field work before her Ph.D. was even granted. So much for formal education as a way to create new scholarly methods.

Ms. Goodall has a wonderful love of humans and animals that makes no significant distinction between them. I was overwhelmed to read her descriptions of her pets and the chimpanzees and baboons she studied. It is remarkable to read page after page as she gossips with people about the animals by name in more detail and with more sympathy than in much of what she writes about people who were not close to her. This perspective is a fairly unique one, and led to her finding ways to relate to the animals throughout her early years.

There is great humor throughout the letters. Her many descriptions of men becoming interested in her and how she handled them are echoed in her descriptions of the female chimpanzees eluded the hovering males. Humor and laughter came easily to her. You will laugh too at the descriptions of the chimpanzees tickling each other.

You will come away with a great respect for what she accomplished. The difficulties she overcame were incredible, and the work that she put into her research is beyond imagining. She mostly wrote these letters around midnight, after working from 6:30 in the morning . . . often in the driving rain. This was a 7 day a week effort for her. Frustrations were everwhere. Great sequences would occur, but where no one could photograph them. Or the exposures were set wrong on the camera, and the whole roll of film produced nothing. And the camera problems were just the least of it . . . although they were the most maddening to Ms. Goodall. Malaria, shingles, and mysterious diseases affected her and the others she worked with. But her commitment remained strong.

Dale Peterson has done a fine job of selecting the letters and summarizing them at the beginning of each section. My only complaint about the editing was that more footnotes would have been helpful. I was regularly lost in trying to understand who some of the people were whom Ms. Goodall refers to.

I suggest that you give this book to a young person who loves animals. Perhaps something will "click" that will allow that person to see that she or he can live a life devoted to inquiry and closeness with animals.

Follow your instincts!

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Jane Goodall, April 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Africa in My Blood : An Autobiography in Letters (Hardcover)

For those of us who may think we know Jane Goodall as theheroine of National Geographic specials, the champion of primateintelligence and animal rights, one of the great scientists of thetwentieth century, Africa in My Blood comes as a revelation. Here is the young girl and woman discovering life for the first time, having a crush on the local curate, writing to her best friend Sally and her "Darling Family," traveling by slow boat to Africa, and then launching the career that we have never seen through such fresh eyes. Most astonishing of all, it turns out that Jane Goodall is a splendid writer of letters, which are full of comic anecdotes and finely-observed details, capturing in vivid prose the immediate events of her life and much wonderful material not included in her other books. Dale Peterson has done a superb job of editing, organizing, and introducing this monumental collection, showing Goodall as both private and professional woman, in both intimate portrait and dazzling display of her gifts as a writer. One can only hope that a second volume is on its way soon. END