MOLA TOUR
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louise young
MOLA TOUR is proud to have Louise Young as their guide for all of our scheduled tours in 2010. A biologist and fiber artist, Louise first visited Kuna Yala in 1993. She was immediately enchanted by the Kuna people, the tropical rain forest, and molas. In subsequent visits she developed an excellent rapport with the members of several Kuna communities. Louise's academic training in ecology gives her a naturalist's enthusiasm, and her fiber arts background (one of her quilts is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Quilting) adds to her authority when speaking of molas. Louise's own mola collection has been thinned recently after she donated over 100 pieces to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
In her research, Louise has read just about everything written about the Kuna people, but she noticed some serious holes in the literature. "There were several anthropological studies about the Kunas in the late twentieth century," she says, "but the books that came out of those studies were very academic in nature. Many of the less rigorous books contained half-truths and misinformation." In order to address this situation, Louise set out to write her own book about the Kunas.
Originally, she'd conceived a National Geographic-style travelogue, but the more she used the "armchair anthropologist" voice, the more frustrated she became with the stereotypes and generalizations she was forced into making. "When we visit communities on our tours, we're not meeting The Kunas, we're getting to know people -- individuals -- who are Kunas. The only way I can introduce other people to Kunas -- whether in person or on paper -- is one on one, not as stereotypes but as individuals. And the only way I could write about specific people without violating trust was to create fictional characters who reflect what I have learned about Kunas."Louise's novel, Seducing the Spirits, is the story of Jenny Dunfree, a graduate student in ornithology, who's studying harpy eagles in the rain forest near a Kuna island. Through Jenny's eyes, the reader is drawn into Kuna culture and its struggle to retain a traditional identity in the face of erosion from both outside and within the community. Booklist calls Seducing the Spirits "a seductive tale of cultural collision, revelation, and understanding" while Publisher's Weekly says that it is "compassionate and passion-filled" and Kirkus comments on its "beguiling descriptions of the natural world." Seducing the Spirits may be ordered from Amazon (www.amazon.com) or from the publisher (www.thepermanentpress.com)
