The Way Around: Finding My Mother and Myself Among the Yanomami
Written by David Good
Narrated by David Good
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, and reconnect with his mother—and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest—in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, and anthropology.
“My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is ‘long way around’: I’d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour.”
For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist and a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, and claim his heritage.
The Way Around is Good’s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey and back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father and his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother’s abandonment and the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression and drinking, and the near-fatal car accident that transformed him and gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother.
A compelling tale of recovery and discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, and the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades and worlds.
David Good
David Good is a member of a remote indigenous tribe known as the Yanomami. He is the founder and executive director of The Good Project, a nonprofit service organization dedicated to the education, health care, and preservation of indigenous groups in South and Central America. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in biological science and is a public speaker on the Yanomami and other indigenous tribes. He lives in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
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Reviews for The Way Around
7 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Story of David Good, son of American anthropologist and Amazon tribeswoman. Born in Venezuela, the family moved to the US when David was young. His mother lived with them for several years but on a visit back to her tribe, she decided not to return to the US. I found it incredible that a woman who did not even wear clothes and spoke an indigenous language had the courage to leave her people when she did. These people live so isolated that they have no concept of any type of environment but the jungle. They are nomadic people who live outdoors and forage for food. David's father did not display emotions or discuss family matters so all David knew was that his mother had abandoned him. The book is his troubling story leading up to about age 25 when he decides to find his mother in 2011. He lives with her for a couple of months and they bond. Then he returns to the real world but feels pulled back to "his people" (the Yanomami). As the book ends, he has visited once more and set up a non-profit to shed light on the world's population. Hard to believe (but it's true) story. Enjoyed the style and wit of the writing.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A very interesting book that I really enjoyed reading. I would have given more stars but the writing was too casual and colloquial.