Tag Archives: Savage Minds Writing Group

Guard Your Heart and Your Purpose: Faithfully Writing Anthropology

(Savage Minds is pleased to run this essay by guest author Bianca C. Williams as part of our Writers’ Workshop series. Bianca is Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, and holds a PhD in anthropology from Duke University. She is the author, with Tami Navarro and Attiya Ahmad, of the article “Sitting at the Kitchen Table: Fieldnotes from Women of Color in Anthropology,” and of the forthcoming Duke University Press book Exporting Happiness in which she examines how African American women use international travel and the Internet as tools for pursuing leisure, creating intimate relationships and friendships, and critiquing American racism, sexism, and ageism.)

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”   Proverbs 4:23

Like many others, the blank page can terrify me. Simply starting a new blog post, an essay, or a book chapter can have me tumbling into hours, days, or shame-filled weeks of procrastination. These are the times that resistance and fear triumph, and I feel myself falling into a moody mixture of anger, frustration, sadness, and general feelings of incompetence. Oh, and sometimes there is crying. However, once I find successful methods for dragging the words that are in my head onto the page,[1] I then attempt to organize them in a way that makes sense, creates “new” knowledge, and contributes to multiple fields, ever aware that in some near future a committee will attempt to quantify my publication impact and decide whether they should grant me tenure. Surprisingly, for the past three weeks Writing and I have engaged in a truce—or I should say, she has decided to get off my back, give me some room to breathe, and allow the words that infiltrate my dreams and my meditation sessions to flow a bit easier onto the page. What is interesting is that this period of writing peace has resulted in a new issue: I keep getting my best writing ideas while I’m in the shower. Continue reading →

Week 4: Savage Minds Writing Group Check-In

An “exposed investment in someone else’s truth.” What an insightful, generous, weighty way to think about the responsibility of the anthropologist. These are Sienna Craig’s words from her essay On Unreliable Narrators. So much of what she wrote resonated for me. Thinking about how people try to reliably narrate an unreliable world. About the vulnerability of unreliability. Or the contagion properties of the unreliable, of how the category or label can move through a group, set in motion truths of a fiercely certain sort. And, of course, of the anthropologist as narrator, reliable or not? Continue reading →

Week 3: Savage Minds Writing Group Check-In

Week 3? How is that already possible? We have somehow collectively arrived at week three of our ten week writing group. One-third of the way through! We kicked off this week with writing insights from Kirin Narayan (“Ethnographic Writing with Kirin Narayan: An Interview”). Much of what she had to said coursed through my writing mind this week: on trying to merge what you have to write with what you want to write; on the theoretical and ethical importance of portraying people in their complexity; and her answer in its entirety to my question “Why ethnography?” She replied:

For the discipline of paying attention; for learning from others; for becoming more responsibly aware of inequalities; for better understanding the social forces causing suffering and how people might somehow yet find hope; and most generally, for being perpetually pulled beyond the limits of one’s own taken-for-granted world.

Amen. Continue reading →

Ethnographic Writing with Kirin Narayan: An Interview

(Savage Minds is pleased to run this interview with Kirin Narayan as part of our Writers’ Workshop series. Kirin is currently professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at Australian National University, after a distinguished career in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. She is the author of numerous books and articles, written across all possible ethnographic genres, including the monograph Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching, folklore such as Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales, the novel Love, Stars, and All That, her memoir My Family and Other Saints, and the writing guide Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov.)

This past month, I interviewed Kirin Narayan over email, she in Australia and India, and me in the USA. Inspired not only by her writings, but also by an ethnographic writing workshop she led for faculty and students at the University of Colorado a couple years back, I wanted to share her insights and inspiration with Savage Minds readers and participants in our ongoing writing group. Below is our exchange. Enjoy, learn, write!

  • CM: One of the things so unique about your writing are the many genres and forms you write across: academic prose, fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, writing about writing, storytelling, editing, books, articles, and so on. What has your writing path in anthropology been like? How much have you purposefully shaped what and how you wrote versus how much have embraced what invitations and opportunities have serendipitously come your way?

Continue reading →

Week 2: Savage Minds Writing Group Check-In

Here we are again: Friday! How was your week? Did you sink into a good groove, or did you more write-in-place as is sometimes the case? My writing this week was helped by Gina Athena Ulysse’s post Writing Anthropology and Such, or “Once More, with Feeling.” She gave us so much to think with as well as to feel and to allow without apology. Writing from the gut? Check. Writing without permission from others? Check. Writing with an awareness of the constraints of position and category? Check. Writing anyway? Check!

And she gave us this gem: “Decades ago, I realized that I am not a linear writer, but more of a quilt maker. I am content when I produce chunks. I have also learned to not berate myself if I can’t come up with anything. There are works by certain poets and art books near my desk (or in the moveable studio bag), which I need and reach for when words are not whirling out of my head as I face the screen.  As long as I am present in the space and in conversation with artists or even in silence, I now consider myself writing.”  Continue reading →

Anthropologists: Ready, Set, Write!

Anthropologists have always been writers. But we have not always paid attention to writing as craft or as practice, rather than as vehicle for communicating knowledge. While historically some anthropologists wrote well or across genres—Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Cara Deloria, Laura Bohannan, and Clifford Geertz immediately come to mind—the 1980s literary turn in anthropology brought us new collective energy and interest in not just writing, but in writing well.

Writing takes time. Writing well takes time and practice. Continue reading →

Announcing the Savage Minds Writing Group

It’s time to get writing. We invite any and all anthropologists working on any sort of writing project to join the new Savage Minds Writing Group. Starting Monday, January 20, the group will run for ten weeks, concluding on Friday, March 28. The objective of the group is to provide a community of support and accountability to help members achieve their weekly writing goals. Writing group participants will check in online here every Friday to report their weekly writing progress. Writing can be such a solo endeavor, so here’s to forging some collective energy and inspiration!

Toward the goal of inspiration, the writing group will be paired with a series of Writers’ Workshop blog posts every Monday. Our schedule of fantastic guest authors is: Continue reading →