Wild life : dispatches from a childhood of baboons and button-downs /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight meets Mean Girls in this funny, insightful fish-out-of-water memoir about a young girl coming of age half in a "baboon camp" in Botswana, half in a ritzy Philadelphia suburb.
Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents were studying. She could wield a spear as easily as a pencil, and it wasn't unusual to be chased by lions or elephants on any given day. But for the months of the year when her family lived in the United States, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the far more treacherous landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy.
Most girls Keena's age didn't spend their days changing truck tires, baking their own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They also didn't carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena's parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players.

In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life , Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Roberts's refreshing, upbeat debut is a rollicking memoir of girlhood adventure and matter-of-fact bravery. Raised by university professors and primatologists who conduct field research half the year, Roberts straddled two worlds: the African bush and a Philadelphia private school. When she was eight, her family moved to Baboon Camp, a research outpost in a watery delta of Botswana, where she learned to read the freshness of leopard, impala, and lion prints to determine "how careful I needed to be." At 10 she piloted a motorboat on a two-hour mission past elephants, hippos, and crocodiles and is rewarded with a beer. Roberts writes with humor and kindness throughout, especially as she examines white privilege and the cultural differences of the Botswanans. Back in the U.S. she missed "the comforting familiarity of hyenas whooping and zebras calling," and objected to going to class "when I heard that school was an inside activity." Attending school in Philadelphia as an avid fantasy reader, she shied in the face of bullies: "America was not a safe place for me... I had to lie low and let the danger pass." When she was accepted to Harvard, a competitive classmate said, "You don't deserve to go," calling her upbringing "an unfair hook... to get something you haven't earned." Resilient and resourceful, Roberts celebrates an unorthodox life in this endearing memoir. (Nov.)

Booklist Review

Imagine growing up in Kenya, in the bush, where your parents study monkeys, until, at age six, you're thrust into the totally different environment of an elite private school in Philadelphia. After a disastrous dance recital, where Roberts was ridiculed for dancing to a Kenyan pop song, the family moved to the Okavango delta in Botswana and Roberts decided she had to start acting like a grownup. Tales of being homeschooled in camp while her parents did field work, guarding frozen chickens from baboons, reading science fiction, doing laundry, and shooting a black mamba alternate with excerpts from Roberts' journal. When she returns to school halfway through the sixth grade, with social groups already set, her previous best friend is now the queen of the sixth grade, and Roberts knows she won't fit in. The contrast between life in the bush and life in the city, and of how Roberts learns to balance her two selves the girl in the delta who can do everything adults do and the weirdo who doesn't feel safe in America is a terrific coming-of-age story. Full of details about field research and bar mitzvahs, what to do when you meet dangerous wildlife or dangerous mean girls, and how reading was her salvation, Roberts' fish-out-of-water story is impossible to put down.--Nancy Bent Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Coming-of-age between a baboon research camp in Africa and a private school in Pennsylvania.The daughter of American professors and primatologists, Roberts spent her early years in Kenya in the Amboseli National Park, "close enough to the border with Tanzania to see Mount Kilimanjaro." A brief spell in Philadelphia left her feeling that her new home was "too big inside and not enough outside." When her parents moved the family back to a remote camp on a game reserve in Botswana, it signaled new adventure. The author's meticulous child's view stitches back-and-forth vignettes of a carefree girlhood among wildlife and a rougher existence at school in Pennsylvania. Refreshingly, Roberts avoids many common stereotypes of Africa; she clearly captures its many wonders as well as its perils, such as a mamba that she shot with an air rifle. Lush descriptions linger over flora and fauna, providing an immersive narrative that will have readers admiring the author's mostly charming adventures, from piloting a boat at age 10 to joining her parents on their baboon watch. Roberts also shows us the everyday rigors of living in tents and enduring the oppressive heat, which often left them simply seeking shade from 9 to 5, when "it was too hot to function." Recounting her time in the U.S., the author emphasizes her feelings of displacement and difficulties navigating many rite-of-passage moments. The chapters about high school turn more serious, and the pace slows as Roberts turns her attention to familiar adolescent pains. She weaves broader topics, such as the HIV crisis in Botswana, into a later chapter, and while she longs for the days at baboon camp, "American Keena has given me some important experiences as well." The journey's end is elegiac yet hopeful: "The wardrobe door may have closed on Narnia, but that doesn't mean the story is over."This episodic, warm exploration of identity and culture is both wide-eyed and surprisingly wise. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Keena Roberts graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology and African studies. She was deeply affected by the impact the HIV/AIDS epidemic had on Botswana when she lived there; at Harvard, she studied Botswana's response to the epidemic. After graduation, she spent two years working in the U.S. House of Representatives on issues relating to foreign affairs and health policy and later earned a dual Masters from Johns Hopkins University in International Public Health and Development Economics. Most recently she has worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in HIV/AIDS and LGBT health policy, for a government contractor on implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the United States and she now works for an international market research company examining consumer health in more than 100 countries around the world.