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Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Poem / Phenomenon

Harvest Song

A poet-anthropologist celebrates relatedness across difference in a poem that honors the festivals of Navratri, Durga Puja, Kali Puja, Day of the Dead, and Halloween—all of which draw on otherworldly connections and mysteries.
By Durba Chattaraj
28 Oct 2024
A black painted hand covered in red paint holds a skull figure decorated with floral patterns in shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Painted white with black accents to resemble a skull, the face—and also gray hair and flower headband—of the person holding the skull are blurry in the background.Cindy Ord/Getty Images

In New York City, a Day of the Dead figure holds a sugar skull in 2020.

Cindy Ord/Getty Images

✽

“I notice that autumn is more the season of the soul than of nature.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche

 

All our bloods in harvest
Call out for celebration
Goddesses, ghouls, ancestors
All demand libation
Anglos hang onto Halloween
Going full-on pagan

Day of the dead
Nine nights divine
Mahua, soma, mezcal, wine [1] Mahua refers to a liquor made of the Mahua flower common in Eastern India.
Bonfire, bonhomie, dead’s bread, bhog [2] Dead’s bread is an English translation of Pan de Puerto. Bhog is a shared meal offered during many Hindu festivities, one that has been offered to the gods and consecrated by them.
Dakinis Joginis going rogue [3] Dakinis and Joginis are the Goddess Kali’s troublemaking, fearsome companions and helpers.

Blood seems to remember
In the window before winter
A creeping crevice widens
Between that which we will never know
And that which we have always sensed
Before enlightened sense prevailed

Even secular saints agree
On this season’s propensity
For being “more of soul than nature”
This I am willing to wager
That all our souls in harvest
Call out for celebration
Goddesses, ghouls, ancestors
All demand libation

Durba Chattaraj

Durba Chattaraj is an anthropologist who teaches writing and a writer who teaches anthropology at the Princeton Writing Program. Previously, she acted as one of the first faculty to co-found a new liberal arts university in India, Ashoka University, where she taught anthropology and writing. She is working on a book titled Democracy, Education, Decolonization that examines the relationship between pedagogy and democracy in both the U.S. and India. Follow her on Substack: The Difference Filter.

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