Delia Akeley and the Monkey: A Human-Animal Story of Captivity, Patriarchy and Nature

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Iain McCalman

Delia Akeley and the Monkey

A Human-Animal Story of Captivity, Patriarchy and Nature

Iain McCalman

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English

UPSWELL
01 February 2022

Biography; Biography: general

By telling this story, Iain McCalman illuminates much about human-animal relations and the tyranny of gender inequality. He reinstates a twentieth century story of a dedicated amateur primatologist and her adopted Vervet monkey.

On an East-African hunting expedition in 1909, Delia Akeley, a forty-year-old American woman, captured a baby female monkey. Delia's loneliness in an isolating patriarchal world, and her long-frustrated desire to adopt a child, had motivated her to nurture the animal. She named the monkey JT Jr and decided to study her interactions with humans.

The unique relationship between Delia and JT unlocked Delia's latent talents of research and observation, anticipating both Jane Goodall's chimpanzee writings and Margaret Mead's Samoan ethnographies. However, Delia's love for JT clashed with her husband Carl's obsession to create a temple of African wildlife dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Nursing Carl's broken body and realising their diverging interests pushed Delia into a breakdown in Uganda, which led to a savage divorce in Manhattan, and the heartbreaking caging of JT in a Washington zoo. Carl's death triggered a long battle between Delia and Carl's widow, who succeeded in obliterating most of Delia's achievements.

In Delia Akeley and the Monkey, Iain McCalman uses official records and personal documents to build a story of passionate love and hate among women, men, animals and museums that predates our times but speaks to our present. It illuminates much about human-animal relations and the tyranny of gender inequality, through reinstating an obscured story of a dedicated amateur primatologist.

By: Iain McCalman
Imprint: UPSWELL
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 136mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 268g
ISBN: 9780645076363
ISBN 10: 0645076368
Publication Date: 01 February 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for Delia Akeley and the Monkey: A Human-Animal Story of Captivity, Patriarchy and Nature

"""In Delia Akeley and the Monkey, Iain McCalman uses the life of the flawed but fascinating woman at its centre as the starting point for a meditation on colonial violence, patriarchy and animals. The results are remarkable: fascinating, troubling, strange and sad in equal measure."" -James Bradley, Author of Ghost Species and Clade ""Iain McCalman recovers a forgotten story of the primal struggles between man, woman, nature and culture. Combining the breadth of Moby Dick and Heart of Darkness with the passions of Born Free and Out of Africa, Delia Akeley and the Monkey is an inspiring and unsettling story from the heart of Africa and the heart of one extraordinary woman."" -Danielle Clode, Author of In Search of the Woman who Sailed the World (2020)"