Elephant tales: Part I
By Debra Durham • Mar 1st, 2008 • Category: Elephants, Features, Fiction“The White Bone” by Barbara Gowdy is my latest fiction purchase and I can’t wait to sit down with it. I ordered a used copy after hearing the podcast of a recent interview with the author on Animal Voices (one of my very favorite podcasts).
Some parts of the story focus on a female elephant named Mud, while others focus on Date Bed, an elephant empath who can communicate with other animal species. We read the story of their elephant family and their elephant lives they lead in a world that they share with other animals and the humans who come after them and sometimes murder them.
Since it arrived in the mail, I have spent some time reviewing the artifacts to the story: the map, genealogy and glossary at the very front of the book. The very fact that the author has given attention to such details excites me. The mental map of of their world is front and center with the suggestion that Mud and the others have concepts of the world that differ from our own. We know from decades of field observations that social relationships are an integral part of elephant life. Gowdy apparently embraces elephant sociality with a formal genealogy illustrating the relational aspects of Mud’s world along with the cultural roles of specific individuals.
A friend of mine also got the book, albeit free from the library, after hearing the podcast. We are both looking forward to this one. More to come on The White Bone.
