Go And Come Back Book Review

Go and Come Back
Posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 11:02 am
Book Review
-Go and Come Back-
By: Aery Yoo It is nice to have a place to return to. The author of Go and come back, Joan Abelove, acutely makes us realize that. The author, Joan Abelove has won many awards for Go and come back; It was chosen as ‘an ALA notable book,’ ‘an ALA best book for young adults,’ and ‘a 1999 Los Angeles Times book prize finalist.’ Her first book, Go and come back is a fiction based on real places, experiences, and people. The people who live in the village of Poincushmana in Peru only know each other. However, one day, two white women, who are strangers come to Poincushmana to study the people’s lives. Everybody is fascinated
Moreover, I also realized that I have a place to return to. For example, at the end of the book , when it is time for Margarita and Joanna to leave, Alicia tells them, “”Catanhue”, I said, Go and come back.” (177) The word “Catanhue” was more powerful than “I love you,” or “I will never forget you,” or any other words. The phrase, “Go and come back” to me, seemed like a sign of eternal connection between family. Moreover, Go and come back plant abiding belief in people, about people. For example, when Joanna feels guilty because she thought that she made Margarita sick, Alicia goes to her and tells her, “How can you think you have such power, to be able to harm people? No, it can’t be. Only if you ate a tabooed food, or asked a witch to cast a spell. People don’t have that kind of power over each other by accident, by chance, for no reason, without spending much time learning to be a witch. No. You can only harm people if you mean to.” (75)
Everybody knows that people have power to harm other people. However, influenced by the author’s unique and memorable writing style, we are mysteriously convinced that people do not have such power to harm people. We are strangely assimilated with the author, and Abelove’s writing leads us to have credence in
In Joan Abelove's ''Go and Come Back,'' married women have boyfriends, teen-agers have sex and become mothers, couples invent excuses to slip off to the bushes for amorous encounters and everyone skinny-dips in the river. Were all this activity happening in the Hamptons it would raise an eyebrow or two, but since the novel takes place in a village in the Peruvian jungle we have to look with fresh eyes, brows at ease.
The author did her doctoral research in cultural anthropology in the Amazon jungle more than 25 years ago, and this, her first novel, is based on her experiences there. Instead of narrating events as the pale explorer recording the oddities of the dark savages, she has written the story through the eyes of a young woman in the village who is alternately intrigued and appalled by the behavior of the two strange white women who come to stay for a year.
Missionaries pass through and want to change the toilet habits of the Isabo (the fictive name the author gives the people of the region), but the anthropologists are there to observe and take notes. While the narrator, Alicia, does gain a measure of new perspective (she gets a ride in an airplane near the end of the book to see her village from a bird's-eye view), it is the two visitors, Joanna and Margarita, who change the most. Alicia instructs them in everything from cleanliness to the proper behavior of boyfriends. They learn what it means to be hospitable