5 Books that Are Great Examples of Cultural Anthropology

Crazy Rich Asians, by Kevin Kwan
Few recent books have exposed readers to a world heretofore not only unexplored, but generally not even understood to exist, in quite the same way as Crazy Rich Asians and its sequel, China Rich Girlfriend. Kwan’s magic lies in his complete lack of a moral compass in telling his tales of unimaginably rich Chinese families flaunting their wealth. Because he never pauses to wonder if any of it matters, to worry over whether these are good or bad people or whether their money might be used better elsewhere, the reader doesn’t have to either.We merely stare, wide-eyed, as this glittering, cold, gaudy world is revealed to us.

Primates of Park Avenue, by Wednesday Martin
The greatest trick Wednesday Martin ever pulled was obfuscating her own wealth and privilege, the wealth and privilege that gave her access to the Upper East Side Manhattan that she eviscerates with almost gleeful scientific rigor in this memoir. While readers outside of the ultra-rich Manhattan neighborhoods described in this witty, sometimes arch book might not have embraced her if they realized how much an outsider Martin really wasn’t, it doesn’t change the fact that her detailed examination of the strange, insular world of rich mommies and trophy wives is equal parts horrifying (for the average person with human emotions) and entertaining (for everyone who enjoys seeing smug people taken down a notch).

Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman
The source book for the film Mean Girls, Wiseman’s exploration of the modern teenage “Girl World” is more of a self-help book with anthropological tendencies than a novel, breaking down teenage life into cliques and behavior patterns with psychological and cultural inspirations, and offering suggestions and solutions for navigating the maze. It remains one of the most popular, useful books for parents of teenage girls, not because it inspired a hit movie, but because it explains what’s going on in clear, perceptive language that any parent, no matter how distant from her own childhood, can easily understand and utilize.

Bennington Girls are Easy, by Charlotte Silver
It’s important to remember that subcultures are often fleeting. Just as the Greasers of the 1950s and the Hippies of the 1960s came and went, so to do all other pockets of American weirdness. Smart writers understand that sometimes the best way to go anthropological is to focus on that moment of transition. Silver expertly captures a moment in time when graduates of elite school Bennington, brilliantly educated but peculiarly sheltered from life, ran smack into the economic downturn of the last decade. Instead of corporate jobs that would have funded their misadventures, Silver’s rich recent grads fumble through sex and intense self-love affairs that ultimately doom friendships and end romances, giving the rest of us a glimpse at a very specific subculture in scientific (and amusing) detail.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple
On the surface, Where’d You Go, Bernadette isn’t anthropological at all—it’s a straight-up novel about a brilliant woman who retreats into home and family life to escape a damaging past, only to run away when things reach a breaking point. Dig deeper, though, and you find a scathing examination of modern Seattle, and the monied-yet-progressive families that send their kids to the Galer School, where Bernadette’s daughter Bee is a student. With a main character transplanted from Los Angeles, the novel serves as a dissection of a particular subculture in a specific city, arguably at a specific period in time, and it is equal parts hilarious and insightful.