The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief

by Renato Rosaldo

This deeply moving collection of poetry by Renato Rosaldo focuses on the shock of his wife Michelle (Shelly) Rosaldo's sudden death on October 11, 1981. Just the day before, Shelly and her family had arrived in the northern Philippine village of Mungayang, where she and her husband Renato, both accomplished anthropologists, planned to conduct fieldwork. On October 11, Shelly died after losing her footing and falling some sixty feet from a cliff into a swollen river. Renato Rosaldo explored the relationship between bereavement and rage in his canonical essay, "Grief and a Headhunter's Rage," which first appeared in 1984 and is reprinted here. In the poems at the heart of this book, he returns to the trauma of Shelly's death through the medium of free verse, maintaining a tight focus on the events of October 11, 1981. He explores not only his own experience of Shelly's death but also the imagined perspectives of many others whose lives intersected with that tragic event and its immediate aftermath, from Shelly herself to the cliff from which she fell, from the two young boys who lost their mother to the strangers who carried and cared for them, from a tricycle taxi driver, to a soldier, to priests and nuns. Photographs taken years earlier, when Renato and Shelly were conducting research across the river valley from Mungayang, add a stark beauty. In a new essay, "Notes on Poetry and Ethnography," Rosaldo explains how and why he came to write the harrowing yet beautiful poems in The Day of Shelly's Death . More than anything else though, the essay is a manifesto in support of what he calls antropoesía , verse with an ethnographic sensibility. The essay clarifies how this book of rare humanity and insight challenges the limits of ethnography as it is usually practiced.

Genres: Poetry, Anthropology, Ethnography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Renato Rosaldo is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and past president of the American Ethnological Society. He is the author of The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief, Culture and Truth and Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974, and two award-winning poetry collections, Diego Luna's Insider Tips and Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la Mujer Araña.

Reviews

[Grace Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

"All interpretations are provisional; they are made by positioned subjects who are prepared to know certain things and not others. Good ethnographers, knowledgeable and sensitive, fluent in the language, and able to move easily in an alien cultural world, still have their limits. Their analyses are always incomplete."

[Ramisa R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant and beautifully haunting, The Day of Shelly’s Death is a versa novella that will stay with me. The language used wasn’t sophisticated, but gritty and suiting to the subject matter, along with the manner the story was told.
By using a real-life event to tie witnesses together, the story enters the minds of those around Shelly, around the place of event, where the heartbreaking freak accident occurred. Each of the character had their own personalities, their own role, and aspects that defined them over other characters. The fact the story revolved around a single event added to the overall intensity, and each character was genuine, their lives filled with their own complications.
There wasn’t much to be said. Perhaps this is why the novella was so short –I was astonished to find that the majority of the book were notes/side-information rather than the story itself. However, they helped me understand the true meaning behind the words, and the last verse was deeply moving, like the rest of the book.
Overall, The Day of Shelly’s Death is exactly what it sounds like: one significant day, one significant person and a number of people affected by such an event. It was a beautifully told versa novella, and quite an easy read (in its honest, everyday word choice). I highly recommend it for anybody wishing to try a versa novella.

[Lacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was amazing.

I read it because I won a copy of it on a giveaway here on Goodreads, and for that I am thankful. I'm usually not much of a poetry reader, but this was great. Renato Rosaldo's writing style is beautiful, and I would absolutely recommend it to anyone -- poetry lovers or not!

[E. H.]

I recieved this book as part of the GoodReads First Reads giveaway. So far it is beautifully writtten and very touching. I will update this review once I have been able to re-read it with my full attention.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Day of Shelly's Death: The Poetry and Ethnography of Grief by Renato Resaldo is one man's account of the death of his wife while in the Philippines. Resaldo is a graduate of Harvard and professor emeritus at Stanford. He currently teaches at New York University. Rosaldo is a a leading cultural anthropologist with several published books including Ilongot Headhunting: 1883-1974: A Study in Society and History published in 1980. He was conducting further field research when he lost his wife in an accident. His wife, Shelly, also an anthropologist studied the Ilongots. They were working together in country with their two sons in 1981 when she became victim to a tragic accident.

The Day is a book the center mostly on a single event and a single day. The day Resaldo lost his wife: October 11, 1981. The collection of poems are moving and heartfelt. Resaldo not only tells his story but tells the story through the eyes of others who were involved both before and after the event. He recalls the coin toss that fateful day. One of their children was sick and he and Shelly tossed a coin to see who would stay back with the children. He stayed. The pedal taxi driver who who offered him a ride as a gift when he heard that Shelly died. There is a poem where his children tell their experience. The cliff where Shelly fell also writes of the experience. Resaldo writes all these views and puts them into free verse. The verse is not always free flowing, but seems halting at times, like someone talking through a very emotional event. It is, but it is also reflecting the poetry writing years later. The Philippine natives speak as English is their second language. This is also captured very well in the poetry with with noun and verb agreement and placement. Resaldo does an excellent job capturing the environment and the people; that should come as no surprise for a leading anthropologist.

Each chapter begins with a simple introduction followed by the poems. The second part of the book is an essay called “Notes on Poetry and Ethnography” in which Resaldo explains why and how he came to write the poems. In addition the reader will gain some education on ethnography and how it is used in the book.

This collection may not give the flow and feel of traditional poetry; it is not Wordworth or Keats. It does, however, accomplish what poetry is meant to accomplish: It recreates the day. The feelings of the author. The feelings of the people directly and indirectly involved in the event. It creates powerful experiences using words and makes the reader experience these emotions. All in all an outstanding work and a tribute.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

“These poems create deep feeling through the accumulation of concrete particulars rather than by beginning (as so many fine lyric poets do) with a named subjective state and elaborating through image and metaphor.”

“On a logical plane the doctrine of predestination seems flawless: God has chosen the elect but his decision can never be known by mortals. If a group’s ultimate concern is salvation, however, this coherent doctrine proves impossible to live with for all but the religious virtuoso. The problem of meaning, for Calvinists and Ilongots alike, involves practice, not theory. At stake for both groups are practical matters concerning how to live with one’s beliefs, rather than logical puzzlement produced by an abstract doctrine.”

“All interpretations are provisional; they are made by positioned subjects who are prepared to know certain things and not others. Good ethnographers, knowledgeable and sensitive, fluent in the language, and able to move easily in an alien cultural world, still have their limits. Their analyses are always incomplete.”

[Lou Corn]

Though I'm still skeptical about ethnography even in its transformation by the sensitive and himself critical Rosaldo into "Anthropoesía", I appreciated not just the poems in this collection but their self-reflexive analysis and the concluding section, a transcript of a speech given at a ethnography conference, on headhunting, grief, and rage. This book was gifted to me to accompany my own grieving over a family member's death. I had noted my unusual and fresh feeling of anger at that moment but had not returned to it and its meanings until reading about Rosaldo's rage and his observation of rage within the Bugkalot tribe who live on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Maybe my tendency toward intellectualization to deflect what Rosaldo studies as emotional force is what makes me attach to this phrase more than any other in the book: "the field of accidental relations", referring to the strangers who suddenly surround you in dealing with death.

[Ollie Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the honesty of this work. I appreciated how it made ethnography accessible and subtly conveyed anthropological theory in a way that appeals to a wider audience and feels very approachable. He included many people who are not usually a part of ethnography despite their immense impact and that enriched his writing. There are myriad perspectives on the tragedy of his wife’s death and it’s interesting to see how each person is depicted and in what moment in time. It also shows how loss reverberates through a community and has an impact on people you may not even think about. My favorite part was the essay at the end which is about the rage you feel in grief. The Filipino headhunters beautifully represent how cultural norms shape our emotional responses and how we can conventionally express them. I would recommend this book to anyone who has experienced a great loss. Although it’s devastating at times, I do feel it did help me with a recent loss.

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rosaldo deeply shares a personal recollection of losing his wife, navigating this new life as a single father, and recognizing the true meaning of bereavement. Every poem stems from his fieldwork and carefully captures the adrenaline, the sense of emptiness, and confusion. So many questions and so many times travelling to the feeling of 'what if?'. I truly appreciated his discussion at the end as it truly lays out the background for his methodology. A beautiful read that describe the ability to understand certain cultural phenomena once you go through it yourself.

[S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read a few poems from this book for class, but I ended up reading the whole book, along with the essay 'The Headhunter's Rage'. The language is simple, succint and lucid, but the emotions behind every poem, every page, run deep. Loss and grief are strange things to express without romanticising or forcing vulnerability (at least for me) This ethnography did it painfully well. I feel crude, almost, describing this book as 'beautiful.' It is an open, bleeding wound.

[Viv · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Anthropoesie" is an interesting concept, and one executed very well here...Still not very good at reading poetry, or giving it the time it requires--but the multiperspectival and multidimensional approach here embodied bereavement in thought provoking ways...

Critical essays on anthropological method, in regards to emotion / ritual / death, excellent.

[Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit, that was powerful. Beautiful collection of poetry as anthropology and ethnography. I actually kinda read it all backwards ("Grief and a Headhunter's Rage," then "Notes" then the actual poetry), and that actually made it better and more understandable for me (partially because I'm a theory nerd, but still).

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like the concept of this book, a collection of anthropoetry around the day the author’s wife died. I thought his essay that accompanied the collection was helpful. I also liked the inclusion of his previous article, but I also think it shows how much the field has changed.

[Saira Sukthankar · Rating 2 out of 5]

In theory I really enjoy the idea of creating a narrative text that is "intersubjective," but this just came across kinda weird sometimes. On the other hand, there were points that were really so beautiful and very touching- but, truly, the practice of the decentralized "I" was unsettling.

[Hilmi Reyhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

heart-wrenching💔

[Clare Corson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow this was so beautiful. I really like the idea of anthropoesia, or ethnopoetry. The way Rosaldo wrote really spoke to me.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to hear Renato read poems from this intimate collection, and then to chat with the poet himself. Compared to other pieces that he's written, these feel much rougher and, quite frankly, less "poetic." This is NOT a bad thing. He's channeled his grief and his own physical struggles into a portrait of the darkest time in his life and it is beautiful in the way that uncut diamonds are beautiful. At times, they are a hard read because Rosaldo sounds his grief through unexpected voices.

For the poets out there, the author makes uncommon and highly effective stylistic and narrative choices. It's the worth the read if only to experience his technique.

Quality verse. Read it with a box of kleenex nearby.

[Jonathan Hiskes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through a cycle of poems, Rosaldo tells the story of his then-wife's death, 23 years ago, falling down a hillside at the start of their fieldworking trip in the Philippines. The poems tell stories from the perspective of Renato, their two young sons, villagers, a priest, a taxi driver, and others involved in the tragedy. An accompanying essay probes the similarities between ethnography and poetry, both forms of inquiry in which particular details, not theories, are the primary building blocks. A second essay describes the Ilongot headhunters, the subject of Renato and Shelly's previous fieldwork. Rather than posing as a neutral observer, Renato describes how his grief allows him to understand the grief that drives the headhunters' rage. It's a remarkable book, unlike any I've read.

[World Literature Today]

"Dealing with loss is very much about memory. The Day of Shelly’s Death remembers. And it re-members, that is, it reconnects the pieces of broken, fragmented experience." - Margaret Randall, Albuquerque, New Mexico

This book was reviewed in the November 2014 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our website: http://bit.ly/1uKSeGh

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A poignant work focusing on the death of the author's wife during field work.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful example of alternative forms of ethnographic writing, and of poetry.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really hard to read for class considering the amount of grief and loss I've been dealing with in the last 2 years