{"id":234,"date":"2014-08-15T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T14:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/?p=234"},"modified":"2015-09-24T17:49:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T17:49:20","slug":"alisse-waterston-making-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/?p=234","title":{"rendered":"Alisse Waterston: Making Theory Accessible with Intimate Ethnography"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is my sixth post in my Year of Women\u2019s Voices blog
\nseries, and features my review of Alisse Waterston\u2019s ethnography My Father\u2019s
\nWars: Migration, Memory and the Violence of a Century\u00a0 <\/i>(2014).\u00a0\u00a0In this intimate ethnography of her father, Dr. Waterston
\nhas written a frank portrayal of her father as a man, a survivor, a soldier, an
\nentrepreneur, husband, and father.\u00a0 Her
\nwriting honors her father without maudlin sentiment.\u00a0 She frames her father\u2019s lived experiences
\nwith migration and violence, and uses his experiences to illustrate social
\ntheory in a way that makes it accessible for non-academics.<\/div>\n
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Her writing is crisp, clear, and rich with detail. She
\nchooses a concise series of her father\u2019s life events that create a reading
\nexperience that is informative, and moving.\u00a0The reading experience is enhanced by the companion website that
\ncontains photographs, documents, audio files, and videos of her interviews with
\nher father as she worked on this ethnography.\u00a0The book becomes a much more intimate experience through watching the
\ninteractions between Dr. Waterston and her father, observing their body language, and listening to their voices.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0As a writer I appreciate Dr. Waterston\u2019s explanation of her
\nstruggles in her dual roles as daughter and ethnographer, and her process of
\nconducting research. I truly appreciated her discussion of the discipline it
\ntook to not be distracted by the numerous ideas for other projects that called
\nto her during this project, especially when the experience of the project
\nbecame difficult.<\/div>\n
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If you are interested in ethnographic studies, social
\ntheory, history, Judaic studies, anthropology, or if you are looking for an
\nextremely readable book that might help you understand how the experience of
\nviolence shapes lives, this is the book I would hand you.<\/div>\n
\u00a0What I have learned as a writer:<\/div>\n
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    \n
  1. \u00a0 \u00a0It is okay to include yourself in the story.<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0 \u00a0Stick with the project even when it is hard, or
    \nother projects beckon seductively from your research.<\/li>\n
  3. \u00a0\u00a0It is possible
    \nto portray unflattering behaviors in a way that is not overly sympathetic, nor \u00a0vindictive.<\/li>\n
  4. \u00a0Multimedia
    \ncan make a non-fiction project a richer experience, and allows the writer to
    \ninclude \u00a0 \u00a0research material that would be otherwise not be available.<\/li>\n
  5. \u00a0\u00a0Write the story that is hard to write, be
    \nfearless.<\/li>\n
  6. \u00a0 \u00a0Don\u2019t be trapped by conventions of disciplines
    \nor genre.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    \u00a0I am grateful that
    \nDr. Waterston has created a work that is compelling, and readable on a subject
    \nthat is difficult to read about. When
    \nconfronted with violence, most of us want to turn away, to shield our eyes and our minds from horrific events. Dr. Waterston reminds us that even if we
    \nwant to look away, we must not, we need to understand.<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    For a biography and more information about Alisse Waterston and her other books,\u00a0this is the link to My Father’s Wars<\/a>\u00a0website and\u00a0this is the link to Dr. Waterston’s home page<\/a><\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n

     <\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n

     <\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is my sixth post in my Year of Women\u2019s Voices blog series, and features my review of Alisse Waterston\u2019s ethnography My Father\u2019s Wars: Migration, Memory and the Violence of a Century\u00a0 (2014).\u00a0\u00a0In this intimate ethnography of her father, Dr. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[79,101,54,169,176,177,178],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-a-year-of-womens-voices","tag-alisse-waterston","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-embracing-difficult-subjects-in-writing","tag-learning-as-a-writer","tag-my-fathers-wars","tag-reading-as-a-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.writingwhiledistracted.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}