An Ifugao Notebook

About the Book

Maybe you are about to take your children away to live in a culture very different from your own, or maybe you are there already. This book is about two boys and their mother and father and their adjustment to life in a remote settlement in the mountains of northern Luzon in the Philippines. The time was 1968-69, but the adventures and emotions are timeless, and recounted with a liberal dose of the author's infectious sense of humor.

Comments from readers:

"A wonderfully straight-forward, matter-of-fact account with great touches of humor and insight. Captures and relays the flavor of a family's multi-experiences, the people, and daily life in a tiny primitive hamlet."
--Nancy Davis, Denver CO, 2001.

"Style is extremely clear and has a surface simplicity but many levels of depth. The pace is kept from beginning to end and the device of switching perspectives, including the animals', works throughout."
--Mort Fried, 1979.

"Anyone who has taken children to the field, or who contemplates doing so, can read it with retrospective bemusement and delight, or be forewarned of the possibilities inherent in doing family ethnography."
--Joseph Cassagrande, 1978.

"Gives a feeling of how children make their way in new situations."
--Mary Rouse, 1976.

"There were so many things I liked about it: the delightful sections by various 'others' (especially the cat); the honesty with which [the author] talked about problems; the perceptions of Ifugao people and places."
--May Ebihara, 1978.

About the Author

Jean M. Conklin is an indefatigable record keeper and avid letter writer. Both talents proved useful when she accompanied her husband, anthropologist Harold C. Conklin, on several year-long field trips to the Philippines. In addition to serving as a general assistant and keeping up with the typing, filing, and correspondence, she home-schooled their two sons during one year in the field. To help the boys, then ages seven and nine, remember their experiences and friends, she turned the details of that 1968-69 field stay into a narrative for them. An Ifugao Notebook is her first, and very likely last, book. She can be reached at jeanconklin@snet.net.