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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 / Crossroads

When Asked if the World Would End They Answer No

An Indigenous anthropologist-poet visits Woody Island in Alaska, formerly the site of the Kodiak Baptist Orphanage in the early 20th-century, where her great-grandfather lived before being sent to the Carlisle Indian School.
By Abigail Chabitnoy
11 Aug 2021
A black sign with white letters is on the left beside a grove of tall trees and the moss-covered ruins of a building.

A sign marks the Kodiak Baptist Orphanage site on Woody Island, Alaska.

Abigail Chabitnoy

When Asked if the World - Listen
1:44

If you missed the introduction to “When Asked if the World Would End They Answer No,” you can find it here.

✽

I knelt in the blanched tub
for the photograph

not wishing to offend.(Were there claws?)

How could the young
missionary know—
neither of us belonged
on that island
anymore.

How could he know that
that ground was not for
breathing.(Were there claws &
were they softened by
the weather? Field turn
relic—)
How could he know that
the children didn’t nurse
the story back
to health

That she knew
she was ill then—
the teacher
before she left
the boat.

It was only after
the boys’ summer
cabin was complete

they learned about
the grave.(Graves?

How many holes
are required?

How many
bodies
counted?)

I knelt in   the belly
the sinking
shape and when
the limbs grew
tired

settled for the bottom
the sea

a landscape free of ruin.

Long ago they say
we started in boats
on a trip
we were young,

returned old.

Not even then did we find an end.

Abigail Chabitnoy

Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (forthcoming, Wesleyan 2022); How to Dress a Fish, shortlisted for the 2020 International Griffin Prize for Poetry and winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award; and the linocut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light. She currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts low-residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Chabitnoy is a member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska. She has an MFA in poetry and a B.A. in English and anthropology.

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