Briefly Noted

Spectacle, by Pamela Newkirk (Amistad). In 1906, Ota Benga, a Congolese man, was put on display at the Bronx Zoo as a “pygmy,” often caged and left in the company of an orangutan. Benga had been brought to New York by a missionary and adventurer who claimed (falsely) to have saved him from cannibals; for three weeks, visitors gawked at, and often taunted, the star attraction. Ten years later, having led a lonely and desultory life in America, Benga committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Newkirk’s account of this shocking and shameful story is forceful, though Benga’s voice is unfortunately absent. He never wrote about his experience and gave no interviews, so he remains, inevitably, a mysterious figure.