Renato Rosaldois 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 Culture and Truth and Ilongot Headhunting, 1883–1974, as well as two award-winning poetry collections, Diego Luna's Insider Tips and Prayer to Spider Woman/Rezo a la Mujer Araña. This is his first book of antropoesía or "ethnographic poetry."

Books by Renato Rosaldo:

Other poems on the web by Renato Rosaldo:
Three poems

Renato Rosaldo According to Wikipedia.

About The Day of Shelly’s Death:

"In this extraordinary myth cycle, Renato Rosaldo has transformed the story of a death into a multidimensional event made of culturally diverse voices. The poems follow each other, building a tale. Read them aloud. The alchemy of ethnography, narrative, and poetry reassembles an ancient grammar of magic and music. I was swept into an unexpected open space, where telling matters. Anthropologists and poets alike will be inspired and moved."
—Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

"I was deeply moved by this collection. Renato Rosaldo has ventured into new territory, and done so with admirable grace and courage."
—Sandra Cisneros

"Renato Rosaldo's The Day of Shelly’s Death skillfully and gracefully embraces poetry and prose as 'antropoesía.' The collection transports us to a landscape of convergences, a place of life and death matters where an emotional thread connects and binds the past, present, and future, without the hip lingo of avoidance. The Day of Shelly’s Death becomes an inventive, lived trope for our time—not afraid of the human dimension."
—Yusef Komunyakaa

"Reading these beautiful poems, I felt a kindred artistic spirit. Renato Rosaldo seamlessly inhabits the perspectives of different people, taking us inside his own disorienting grief and shock on the day of his wife Shelly's death, as well as the reactions of others affected by her tragic accident. Just as his feelings reverberated with those of others on that day, these poems resonate with one another. They continue to resonate long after you've closed the book."
—Anna Deavere Smith