One of the most widely used ethnographies published in the last twenty years, this Margaret Mead Award winner has been used as required reading at more than 600 colleges and universities. This personal account by a biocultural anthropologist illuminates not-soon-forgotten messages involving the sobering aspects of fieldwork among malnourished children in West Africa. With nutritional anthropology at its core, Dancing Skeletons presents informal, engaging, and oftentimes dramatic stories that relate the author’s experiences conducting research on infant feeding and health in Mali. Through fascinating vignettes and honest, vivid descriptions, Dettwyler explores such diverse topics as ethnocentrism, culture shock, population control, breastfeeding, child care, the meaning of disability and child death in different cultures, female circumcision, women’s roles in patrilineal societies, the dangers of fieldwork, and facing emotionally draining realities. Readers will laugh and cry as they meet the author’s friends and informants, follow her through a series of encounters with both peri-urban and rural Bambara culture, and struggle with her as she attempts to reconcile her very different roles as objective ethnographer, subjective friend, and mother in the field. The 20th Anniversary Edition includes a 13-page “Q&A with the Author” in which Dettwyler responds to typical questions she has received individually from students who have been assigned Dancing Skeletons as well as audience questions at lectures on various campuses. The new 23-page “Update on Mali, 2013” chapter is a factual update about economic and health conditions in Mali as well as a brief summary of the recent political unrest.

A man rises out of his grave to haunted his widow in this scary funny story.

Dance healing is available to everyone! Without even stepping into a dance class, you have access to one of the most powerful healing modalities and can benefit from the profound joy, strength, grace, and love that dance offers you! We all have a skeleton in our closet, something that we have done or that has happened to us that has made our lives difficult, has caused us pain, and has left physical, mental, and emotional scars. Imagine the possibilities when you learn to dance with your skeletons and ultimately heal them in such a way that you will never put them back in the closet again! Dancing with Your Skeletons is a three-part book offering you three separate ways to experience dance healing. The book as a whole can also be an amazing tool to gently and easily facilitate dance healing in your own life. Every dance begins with one step. Reading this book is your first step in a new, beautiful, and exciting dance.

Emerging from his grave, a skeleton cat learns about auditions to be a drummer in a band and, despite the discouragement of his fellow phantoms and trouble along the way, he fulfills his dream of nine lifetimes

These stories are just a slice of life, showing one person's unique perspective on how to find humor in the everydayness of everyday. What seems ordinary and mundane to others become an opportunity to find humor in any situation. No one or no thing is safe or sacred; from riding lawn mowers to grumpy husbands to crazy cats to imaginative teenagers - the more dysfunctional the better story!