When it originally appeared, this groundbreaking ethnography was one of the first works to focus on gender in anthropology. The thirtieth anniversary edition of Women of the Forest reconfirms the book's importance for contemporary studies on gender and life in the Amazon. The book covers Yolanda and Robert Murphy's year of fieldwork among the Mundurucu people of Brazil in 1952. The Murphy's ethnographic analysis takes into account the historical, ecological, and cultural setting of the Mundurucu, including the mythology surrounding women, women's work and household life, marriage and...

Winner of the Columbia University Lionel Trilling Award. Robert Murphy was in the prime of his career as an anthropologist when he felt the first symptom of a malady that would ultimately take him on an odyssey stranger than any field trip to the Amazon: a tumor of the spinal cord that progressed slowly and irreversibly into quadriplegia. In this gripping account, Murphy explores society's fears, myths, and misunderstandings about disability, and the damage they inflict. He reports how paralysis--like all disabilities--assaults people's identity, social standing, and ties with others, while...