# Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs - Hardcover

by **Keena Roberts** (Author)

**_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.  

### Author Biography

**Keena Roberts** graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology and later earned a dual master's from Johns Hopkins University in international public health and development economics. She has worked for government, nongovernment, and private contractors in the field of public health, focusing specifically on HIV/AIDS. _Wild Life_ is her first book.

**Number of Pages:** 304

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 9 x 6.2 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** November 12, 2019

## Details

- **Price:** 28.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 28.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs - Hardcover

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