Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. On Writing and Writing Well: Ethics, Practice, Story / Carole McGranahan 1
Section I. Ruminations
1. Writing in and from the Field / Ieva Jusionyte 23
2. List as Form: Literary, Ethnographic, Long, Short, Heavy, Light / Sasha Su-Ling Welland 28
3. Finding Your Way / Paul Stoller 34
4. The Ecology of What We Write / Anand Pandian 37
5. When Do Words Count? / Kirin Narayan 41
Section II. Writing Ideas
6. Read More, Write Less / Ruth Behar 47
7. Pro Tips for Academic Writing / C. Anne Claus 54
8. My Ten Steps for Writing a Book / Kristen R. Ghodsee 58
9. Slow Reading / Michael Lambek 62
10. Digging with the Pen: Writing Archaeology / Zoë Crossland 66
Section III. Telling Stories
11. Anthropology as Theoretical Storytelling / Carole McGranahan 73
12. Beyond Thin Description: Biography, Theory, Ethnographic Writing / Donna M. Goldstein 78
13. Can't Get There from Here? Writing Place and Moving Narratives / Sarah Besky 83
14. Ethnographic Writing with Kirin Narayan: An Interview / Carole McGranahan 87
15. On Unreliable Narrators / Sienna R. Craig 93
Section IV. On Responsibility
16. In Dialogue: Ethnographic Writing and Listening / Marnie Jane Thomson 101
17. Writing with Community / Sara L. Gonzalez 104
18. To Fieldwork, to Write / Kim Fortun 110
19. Quick, Quick, Slow: Ethnography in the Digital Age / Yarimar Bonilla 118
20. That Generative Space between Ethnography and Journalism / Maria D. Vesperi 121
Section V. The Urgency of Now
21. Writing about Violence / K. Drybread 127
22. Writing about Bad, Sad, Hard Things / Carole McGranahan 131
23. Writing to Live: On Finding Strength While Watching Ferguson / Whitney Battle-Baptiste 134
24. Finding My Muse While Mourning / Chelsi West Ohueri 137
25. Mourning, Survival, and Time: Writing Through Crisis / Adia Benton 140
Section VI. Writing With, Writing Against
26. A Case for Agitation: On Affect and Writing / Carla Jones 145
27. Antiracist Writing / Ghassan Hage 149
28. Writing with Love and Hate / Bhrigupati Singh 153
29. Peer Review: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger / Alan Kaiser 158
30. When They Don't Like What We Write: Criticism of Anthropology as a Diagnostic of Power / Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar 163
Section VII. Academic Authors
31. Writing Archaeology "Alone," or a Eulogy for a Codirector / Jane Eva Baxter 169
32. Collaboration: From Different Throats Intone One Language? / Matt Sponheimer 173
33. What Is and (Academic) Author? / Mary Murrell 178
34. The Writing behind the Written / Noel B. Salazar 182
35. It's All "Real" Writing / Daniel M. Goldstein 185
36. Dr. Funding or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Grant Writing / Robin M. Bernstein 188
Section VIII. Ethnographic Genres
37. Poetry and Anthropology / Nomi Stone 195
38. "SEA" Stories: Anthropologies and Poetries beyond the Human / Stuart McLean 201
39. Dilations / Kathleen Stewart and Lauren Berlant 206
40. Genre Bending, or the Love of Ethnographic Fiction / Jessica Marie Falcone 212
41. Ethnographic Fiction: The Space Between / Roxanne Varzi 220
42. From Real Life to the Magic of Fiction / Ruth Behar 223
Section IX. Becoming and Belonging
43. On Writing from Elsewhere / Uzma Z. Rizvi 229
44. Writing to Become . . . / Sita Venkateswar 234
45. Unscholarly Confessions on Reading / Katerina Teaiwa 239
46. Guard Your Heart and Your Purpose: Faithfully Writing Anthropology / Bianca C. Williams 246
47. Writing Anthropology and Such, or "Once More, with Feeling" / Gina Athena Ulysse 251
48. The Anthropology of Being (Me) / Paul Tapsell 256
Section X. Writing and Knowing
49. Writing as Cognition / Barak Kalir 263
50. Thinking Through the Untranslatable / Kevin Carrico 266
51. Freeze-Dried Memory Crumbs: Field Notes from North Korea / Lisa Sang Mi Min 270
52. Writing the Disquiets of a Colonial Field / Ann Laura Stoler 274
53. On Ethnographic Unknowability / Catherine Besteman 280
Bibliography 283
Contributors 293
Index 305

Writing Anthropology

Essays on Craft and Commitment