In the 1950s, Anne Innis Dagg was a young zoologist with a
lifelong love of giraffe and a dream to study them in Africa. Based
on extensive journals and letters home, "Pursuing Giraffe" vividly
chronicles the realization of that dream and the year that she
spent studying and documenting giraffe behaviour. Dagg was one of
the first zoologists to study wild animals in Africa (before Jane
Goodall and Dian Fossey); her memoir captures her youthful
enthusiasm for her journey, as well as her n?ivete about the
complex social and political issues in Africa.
Once in the field, she recorded the complexities of giraffe
social relationships but also learned about human relationships in
the context of apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in
Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Kenya. Hospitality and friendship were
readily extended to her as a white woman, but she was shocked by
the racism of the colonial whites in Africa. Reflecting the
twenty-three-year-old author's response to an "exotic" world far
removed from the Toronto where she grew up, the book records her
visits to Zanzibar and Victoria Falls and her climb of Mount
Kilimanjaro. "Pursuing Giraffe" is a fascinating account that has
much to say about the status of women in the mid-twentieth century.
The book's foreword by South African novelist Mark Behr (author of
"The Smell of Apples" and "Embrace") provides further context for
and insights into Dagg's narrative.
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