Heritage and Identity: A Reflection on Displacement

On the podcast today I am joined by Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita of Anthropology at John Jay College, City University of New York, Alisse Waterston to talk about her award-winning book, My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory, and the Violence of A Century (Routledge, 2024). The book was first published in the Innovative Ethnographies series by Routledge Books in 2014. Its acclaim has led to the Tenth Anniversary edition which has just come out in 2024.

My Father’s Wars is a story about twentieth-century social history told through the vivid account of Alisse’s father as he journeys across continents, countries, cultures, languages, generations—and wars. The book is a beautifully moving account bridging family narrative and anthropological offering deeply insightful reflections on themes that remain more urgent than before, including migration, memory and violence. Captivating and powerful, the book is not only an important example of just how much ethnographic writing can show rather than tell, it is also an example of the wide terrain of how anthropologists can communicate knowledge multimedia accompaniments.

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