This book forum brings together seven scholars and artists to discuss Todd Meyers’s All That Was Not Her (Duke 2022). A profoundly introspective and original book, All That Was Not Her traces a relationship between an anthropologist and his interlocutor that equally verges on friendship and antagonism. Eschewing well-trodden anthropological approaches which focus on identity or suffering, Meyers delves into issues of loss, care, and illness as they emerge in the context of the politics of race and class in the contemporary United States. The book is equally a bracing meditation on the limits and failures of ethnography and on the always-incomplete project of representing a life. In often startling prose, Meyers melds ethnography, memoir, and cultural criticism into something altogether distinct. We hope that you enjoy these engagements with All That Was Not Her.
Contributions:
Vandalizing Words, Elizabeth A Wilson
Notes on All That Was Not Her, DeShawn Dumas & Maya Stovall
A Himpossible Tale, Anthony Stavrianakis
There Is Nothing Heroic About This Text, Aidan Seale-Feldman
The Return of Contact, Andrés Romero
What Others See: A Reply, Todd Meyers
You can download a pdf version of this book forum here: