Under the Neem Tree

by Susan Lowerre

Overview

Under the Neem Tree is the story of a young American woman who finds herself in a desolate scrap of Moslem Africa—a Pulaar village along the river that marks the border between Senegal and Mauritania.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504023368
Publisher:	The Permanent Press (ORD)
Publication date:	10/13/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	543 KB

About the Author

Susan Lowerre was born and raised in upstate New York. She received a bachelor of arts degree in biology and English from the University of Virginia. After her two years in Senegal, Lowerre lived in Mississippi, working for the National Marine Fisheries Service. She now works at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. 

Editorial Reviews

A Peace Corps worker sent to the Sakel to establish a fish-farming project, the author lived with a family in a tiny Sengalese village near the Mauretania border. We share her initial feelings of dislocation as she contends not only with a primitive lifestyle, lack of creature comforts, and the overt sexism of the Moslem men she supervises, but also with her burgeoning relationships with the women in the little compound who become as much her family as her relatives in America. In a guileless narrative filled with affection and anger, Lowerre tells of the ill health and bureaucratic failings that beset her; she acknowledges the Pulaar people's love and good humor, and offers an unprettified closeup of daily life in an African village. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Like Mike Tidwell in The Ponds on Kalambayi ( LJ 8/90), Lowerre recounts her experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer responsible for teaching fish culture to Africans, in this case Pulaar tribespeople in Senegal. Tidwell and Lowerre both sought acceptance by their hosts, and their books offer insights into the difficulties and rewards of such friendships. Lowerre emphasizes her emotional life and love/hate affair with a country that depressed her and ruined her health, yet seized her imagination and gave her an adoptive Senegalese family. Although she points out that her Peace Corps work is incidental to this story, Tidwell's book is stronger because he describes the goals and techniques of fish farming. Lowerre presents her work as essentially futile, and in the end her struggle seems more self-pitying than heroic. A more comprehensive account of Pulaar culture would also have increased the value and interest of this book. It is an optional purchase for travel or anthropology collections.-- Beth Clewis, J. Sargent Reynolds Community Coll. Lib., Richmond, Va.

Library Journal

Reprint of the Permanent Press edition originally published, Sag Harbor, NY, in 1991. On the adjustment of a Peace Corps worker in northern Senegal. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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