Pushpin memoir: Making meaning out of murder

Abstract

In 2018, my brother Adam Colquhoun, nicknamed “Stretch,” was killed in a bar in Calgary, Alberta by a man he barely knew. Stretch was the kind of person society finds convenient to discard. His history of theft, illicit drug dealing, mental illness, addiction, and homelessness made his humanity “undesirable.” Nevertheless, lessons Stretch learned painfully over his lifetime had something to teach us. In 2016, he told me he wanted someone to write his biography. This paper explores how my brother's murder caused me to collapse the binary between personal and professional, and embrace memoir—a process differing substantially from writing ethnography. I thought of my approach as “pushpin memoir,” akin to a detective board where investigators stick bits of evidence in the aftermath of a crime. Pushpins comprise unusual, standout moments we hold onto among the quotidian we often forget. Meanings gleaned from Stretch's life allowed me to rethink the future of the man who killed him, and thus imagine broader possibilities for people whose actions cause irreparable harm. I ponder how centering the experiencing self feels crucial to future endeavors to write an anthropology that matters to broader publics I hope to engage.