Research Catalog

Title

Yaya's story : the quest for well-being in the world / Paul Stoller.

Author

Stoller, Paul

Publication

• Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• ©2014

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 157 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• Yaya's Story is a book about Yaya Harouna, a Songhay trader originally from Niger who found a path to America. It is also a book about Paul Stoller, its author, an American anthropologist who found his own path to Africa. Separated by ethnicity, language, profession, and culture, these two men's lives couldn't be more different. But when they were both threatened by a grave illness, cancer, those differences evaporated, and the two were brought to profound existential convergence, a deep camaraderie in the face of the most harrowing of circumstances. Yaya's Story is that story.
• Harouna and Stoller would meet in Harlem, at a bustling African market where Harouna built a life as an African art trader and Stoller was conducting research. Moving from Belayara in Niger to Silver Spring, Maryland, and from the Peace Corps to fieldwork to New York, Stoller recounts their separate lives and how the threat posed by cancer brought them a new, profound, and shared sense of meaning. Combining memoir, ethnography, and philosophy through a series of interconnected narratives, he tells a story of remarkable friendship and the quest for well-being. Its a story of difference and unity, of illness and health, a lyrical reflection on human resiliency and the shoulders we lean on.

Subject

• Stoller, Paul
• Songhai (African people) > Niger > Biography
• Nigeriens > New York > Biography
• Anthropologists > United States > Biography
• Interracial friendship > Case studies
• Anthropologists
• Interracial friendship
• Nigeriens
• Songhai (African people)
• New York (State) > New York
• Niger
• United States

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• Case studies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Prologue : the story of Yaya's story -- Belayara -- Three brothers and the work of art -- New York City and transnational trade -- Silver Spring -- Stumbling into anthropology in Niger -- New York City, immigration, and the warehouse -- The shadow of sickness -- Three years in the shadows -- A remarkable convergence -- Epilogue : the quest for well-being in the world.

ISBN

• 9780226178790 (hardcover : alkaline paper)
• 022617879X (hardcover : alkaline paper)
• 9780226178820 (paperback : alkaline paper)
• 022617882X (paperback : alkaline paper)
• 9780226178967 (e-book) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

^^2014000536

OCLC

• 869589066
• SCSB-11355060

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library