Secret Places: My Life in New York and New Guinea (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies)

In the swamps of Asmat in West New Guinea, Tobias Schneebaum—traveler, writer, painter, explorer—finds the way of life that suits him best. Secret Places reels readers into a world of storytellers and sorcerers, cannibals and carvers, a place where Schneebaum discovers his soulmates and his own soul.

Looking back at a life of wild adventure, Schneebaum seeks in Secret Places to intertwine the varied strands of his experience, pondering the parallel universes of his experience as a gay Jewish New Yorker and his years among the Asmat. The result illuminates both worlds—as when he juxtaposes the Asmat celebration of the spirits of the dead with a New York City plagued by AIDS and its own sad spirits.