Anthropology off the Shelf

Alisse Waterston is Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Author of Love, Sorrow and Rage: Destitute Women in a Manhattan Residence (1999), she is currently working on two intimate ethnographies: Out of the Shadows of History and Memory: Writing My Father's Life and Narrating Poland. Maria D. Vesperi is Professor of Anthropology at New College of Florida and a trustee of the Poynter Institute. Author of City of Green Benches: Growing Old in a New Downtown (1986), she is currently completing a book on the relationship between ethnographic narrative and narrative journalism and developing a 150-year social history of a utopian community turned company town.

• Acknowledgments. Notes on Contributors.Foreword (Cheryl Mwaria).1. Introduction: The Writer in the Anthropologist (Maria D. Vesperi and Alisse Waterston).Part I: Conceptions.2. Speaking Truth to Power with Books (Howard Zinn).3. Remember When Writing Was Fun? Why Academics Should Go On a Low Syllable, Active Voice Diet (Karen Brodkin).4. The Bard (Carolyn Nordstrom)5. Saggin' and Braggin' (Lee D. Baker).6. Stories for Readers: A Few Observations from Outside the Academy (Andrew Barnes).Part II: Creations.7. Writing Poverty, Drawing Readers: Stories in Love, Sorrow and Rage (Alisse Waterston).8. Write‑ous Indignation: Black Girls, Dilemmas of Cultural Domination and the Struggle to Speak the Skin We Are In (Signithia Fordham).9. Writing Truth to Power: Racism as Statecraft (Arthur K. Spears).10. Remembering Octavia (Sharon Ball).11. Believing in Anthropology as Literature (Ruth Behar).Part III:  Receptions.12. Walking in Zora's Shoes or "Seek[ing] Out de Inside Meanin' of Words": The Intersections of Anthropology, Ethnography, Identity, and Writing (Irma McClaurin).13. Off the Shelf and Into Oblivion? (Catherine Kingfisher).14. "Don't Use Your Data as a Pillow" (S. Eben Kirksey).15. The Trope of the Pith Helmet: America's Anthropology, Anthropology's America (Micaela di Leonardo).16. The Book that Wrote Me (Roger Sanjek).17. Fighting Words (Paul Farmer).18. Taking Chances (Maria D. Vesperi).Index.

"Anthropology off the shelf ought to be on every introductory reading list..." (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, August 2010) “The essays are both provocative and provoking, compelling and edgy. Whether this thrust in anthropology or in academia in general will continue, books like this are required to keep the intellectual energy within the academy vital and engaged. Indispensible reading across disciplines. Summing Up: Essential.” (CHOICE, October 2009)