Drinkers, Drummers, And Decent Folk Ethnographic Narratives Of Village Trinidad

"Drinkers is an innovative and creative piece of work that sets about to present those subjective cultural dimensions that guide action but are so difficult to establish and present through the usual ethnographic techniques. Stewart uses short stories to present these submerged cultural principles. He is an accomplished writer and the effort is a highly successful one. He is also a fine anthropologist sensitive to the unstated nuances of human behavior in a range of social conditions." -- George C. Bond, Teachers College, Columbia University

S/hand paperback book.

Drinkers is a multi-form text. Essays, poetry, and fiction present rural life in Trinidad. These texts are interspersed with analytic and exploratory sections on the ethnographic and fieldwork experience. Within a context which includes the West Indian sugar estate at its core, and the distant but very influential U.S.A. at the periphery, Stewart reveals villagers struggling with problems of individual identity, as well as with problems occasioned by the historical struggle between African, European, and Indian cultural forms.