23. Writing to Live: On Finding Strength While Watching Ferguson

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Acknowledgments ix
4. Introduction. On Writing and Writing Well: Ethics, Practice, Story 1
5. SECTION I. RUMINATIONS
6. 1. Writing in and from the Field 23
7. 2. List as Form: Literary, Ethnographic, Long, Short, Heavy, Light 28
8. 3. Finding Your Way 34
9. 4. The Ecology of What We Write 37
10. 5. When Do Words Count? 41
11. SECTION II. WRITING IDEAS
12. 6. Read More, Write Less 47
13. 7. Pro Tips for Academic Writing 54
14. 8. My Ten Steps for Writing a Book 58
15. 9. Slow Reading 62
16. 10. Digging with the Pen: Writing Archaeology 66
17. SECTION III. TELLING STORIES
18. 11. Anthropology as Theoretical Storytelling 73
19. 12. Beyond Thin Description: Biography, Theory, Ethnographic Writing 78
20. 13. Can’t Get There from Here? Writing Place and Moving Narratives 83
21. 14. Ethnographic Writing with Kirin Narayan: An Interview 87
22. 15. On Unreliable Narrators 93
23. SECTION IV. ON RESPONSIBILITY
24. 16. In Dialogue: Ethnographic Writing and Listening 101
25. 17. Writing with Community 104
26. 18. To Fieldwork, to Write 110
27. 19. Quick, Quick, Slow: Ethnography in the Digital Age 118
28. 20. That Generative Space between Ethnography and Journalism 121
29. SECTION V. THE URGENCY OF NOW
30. 21. Writing about Violence 127
31. 22. Writing about Bad, Sad, Hard Things 131
32. 23. Writing to Live: On Finding Strength While Watching Ferguson 134
33. 24. Finding My Muse While Mourning 137
34. 25. Mourning, Survival, and Time: Writing Through Crisis 140
35. SECTION VI. WRITING WITH, WRITING AGAINST
36. 26. A Case for Agitation: On Affect and Writing 145
37. 27. Antiracist Writing 149
38. 28. Writing with Love and Hate 153
39. 29. Peer Review: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger 158
40. 30. When They Don’t Like What We Write: Criticism of Anthropology as a Diagnostic of Power 163
41. SECTION VII. ACADEMIC AUTHORS
42. 31. Writing Archaeology “Alone,” or a Eulogy for a Codirector 169
43. 32. Collaboration: From Different Throats Intone One Language? 173
44. 33. What Is an (Academic) Author? 178
45. 34. The Writing behind the Written 182
46. 35. It’s All “Real” Writing 185
47. 36. Dr. Funding or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grant Writing 188
48. SECTION VIII. ETHNOGRAPHIC GENRES
49. 37. Poetry and Anthropology 195
50. 38. “SEA” Stories: Anthropologies and Poetries beyond the Human 201
51. 39. Dilations 206
52. 40. Genre Bending, or the Love of Ethnographic Fiction 212
53. 41. Ethnographic Fiction: The Space Between 220
54. 42. From Real Life to the Magic of Fiction 223
55. SECTION IX. BECOMING AND BELONGING
56. 43. On Writing from Elsewhere 229
57. 44. Writing to Become... 234
58. 45. Unscholarly Confessions on Reading 239
59. 46. Guard Your Heart and Your Purpose: Faithfully Writing Anthropology 246
60. 47. Writing Anthropology and Such, or “Once More, with Feeling” 251
61. 48. The Anthropology of Being (Me) 256
62. SECTION X. WRITING AND KNOWING
63. 49. Writing as Cognition 263
64. 50. Thinking Through the Untranslatable 266
65. 51. Freeze-Dried Memory Crumbs: Field Notes from North Korea 270
66. 52. Writing the Disquiets of a Colonial Field 274
67. 53. On Ethnographic Unknowability 280
68. Bibliography 283
69. Contributors 293
70. Index 305