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Rating: 
Summary: An odd little book
Review: An odd little book about a former ballet dancer dancing tango in Buenos Aires. The author describes herself as blonde and beautiful. She marries and divorces an Argentine man, but it's all in the background of her consuming tango obsession. With disjoint time and amost hallucinatory digressions into the emotions brought to the surface by tango, this reads a bit like "Trout Fishing in America" if it were tango instead of trout. There is a flip book built into the pages where a tango turns first into a violent attack and then into sheets of falling paper. This low-tech animation wordlessly caputures the themes in the text.
Rating: 
Summary: An intriguing 'blurred genre'
Review: Taylor's _Paper_Tangos_ is a great example of how autobiography and ethnography can come together to 'write culture'. The text is introspective, reflecting the nature of the Argentine culture at the time that Taylor lived in South America. In this respect, she was involved in 'participant observation'; it seems that everyone hid from society at the time (lots of scary terrorism going on). In _Paper_Tangos_, she finds refuge in the 'underground' tango culture, and discovers much about her past as she learns about the dance and social practices. If you become Taylor's 'dancing' partner, and read this book on its own terms--outside of genre traditions and 'rules'--you may, like me, appreciate it for the unique perspective that it offers. This book has inspired my own writing and approaches to both memoir and ethnography. And the little flip book it really cool too!!
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