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Literature · short stories
The Songs of Salanda and Other Stories of Sulu
- Publisher
- University of Washington Press
- Year
- 1994
- Language
- English
- Pages
- 237
- ISBN
- 9780295973340
- Availability
- Out of print
No longer sold new: look for it in a library, or for a used copy.
About the book
Stories of the Sama Dilaut of Tawi-Tawi, written by the anthropologist who lived among them, from what he saw and was told.
This is a collection of 16 short stories by H. Arlo Nimmo, an anthropologist who spent 2 years in the mid-1960s among the Sama Dilaut, also called Bajau, of the Sulu archipelago. The Sama Dilaut were then nomadic boat-dwellers who lived in small family houseboats in the far south of the Philippines.
The stories are based on people, places and events Nimmo met during that fieldwork. Together they follow a young man coming of age among people unlike any he had known. The publisher calls it a personal look back at his first fieldwork, and a picture of a people and their culture on the edge of great change.
The University of Washington Press published it in 1994. A coloured map of the Sulu archipelago is printed on the endpapers.
From openlibrary.org, archive.org.
In this engrossing collection of sixteen short stories, H. Arlo Nimmo tells of a young man coming of age while living among a remote cluster of islands in the southern Philippines with a people unlike any he had known. Nimmo combines an anthropologist's eye for the significant detail with a storyteller's gift for bringing his characters to life. His book is a vivid narrative of a people and their culture on the brink of momentous change. The Songs of Salanda is Nimmo's deeply personal exploration of his early anthropological field experiences in the Sulu archipelago. During two years in the mid-1960s, he researched the culture of the Bajau, a small group of nomadic boat-dwellers who plied the waters off the southernmost Philippine islands in small single-family houseboats. Nimmo's stories are based on the people, places, and events he encountered.
LiteraturePeoples and ways of life
Cover from Open Library, shown to identify the book; its rights stay with the publisher.
More by H. Arlo Nimmo
1972Out of print
The Sea People of SuluH. Arlo Nimmo
The boat-dwelling Sama Dilaut of Tawi-Tawi in the 1960s and the changes already reaching them, from the anthropologist who lived among them.
2001In print
MagosahaH. Arlo Nimmo
Nimmo’s return to the Sama Dilaut three decades on: the full ethnography of a people who had by then mostly come ashore.
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