Manus Island, New Guinea (1929)
- I later went to Manus Island in New Guinea with my husband second, Reo Fortune to study play and imagination of children as they mature and integrate into adult society
- The childhood on Manus Island did not prepare the children for what would come in their adult life
- During my time there I had obtained 35,000 drawings from the children which showed that even though their society was based around supernatural things they liked to draw realistic pictures.
- Through studying he paintings by the children I learned that the boys were more likely to have subjects like humans, animals and ships without color while girls had more design and color
- I used ink blot tests as psychological tests to see their interpretations some called it “tchinal” or the “land devil”
- I later published Growing up in New Guinea (1930) and Kinship in the Admiralty Islands (1934)
- I returned later in 1953 to see the cultural differences and wrote a new book called New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation--Manus, 1928-1953 (1956)