“Anthony Bourdain,” by Erin Stalcup (Fiction ’04)

Erin Stalcup, a 2004 fiction alum, was recently featured in Isele Magazine. Read an excerpt of “Anthony Bourdain” below:

Anthony Bourdain

At some point  we just admitted we didn’t know how to mourn. We, the de-ethnicized Americans. Jewish people know how to mourn. Mexican people know how to mourn. Indigenous people know how to mourn, within their individual tribal customs. But some of us have been here so long we forgot where we were from. A cultural framework shows you what to do, makes some decisions for you so you’re less at sea to process this thing that is impossible to process. They are gone. So. Wear black. Wear white. Sit shiva for seven days, forget about comfort, cover the mirrors, forget about appearance, that doesn’t matter now. Then stand up and go back to your life. Walk in jazz funeral processions, and the music will move from dirges to dance tunes. Chop up the body and feed it to the vultures. Bury the dead in a coffin shaped like something they loved in life, a rose or racecar or guitar. A year after their death, disinter the body and dance with it, dress it in new clothes, throw a parade, tell them all the news. Dismember, roast, and eat the dead. Kill a member of another tribe to satisfy your rage. Throw a shovelful of dirt on the coffin, each mourner. Take pictures of the embalmed body. Keep locks of hair. Leave the body with useful tools, your best jewelry, flowers, prepare them for the other side. Some communities still know what to do. But some of us lost loss, forgot.  

The Irish Americans started inviting us to their merry wakes, their funerals. It helped. To celebrate their life joyfully, be intimate with the body, it worked for us to collectively remember why it was worth it to love them. Don’t cry, it will keep the soul here. Then to watch a public performance of mourning—that helped, too. We could watch a woman keen, and it made us feel more pity and sorrow than if we were to cry, and it purged us. 

Maeve MacNamara—the most famous keener in the world—knew, though we didn’t, that the term catharsis was originally a medical term for the expelling of menstrual and reproductive fluids. What the body doesn’t need anymore, to restore balance. We all knew the term as the reason we turn to art, the reason seeing someone else play out a tragedy helps us with our own. When the keener straightens her shoulders, lets us see her tears, then walks away, we follow her out of that space. 

So, we agreed upon consensual reverse colonization—Ireland didn’t impose their cultural customs on us, but they let us adopt them.   

But of course it doesn’t totally work.

Read this piece in its entirety here: https://iselemagazine.com/2021/02/03/anthony-bourdain-erin-stalcup/