Grief

Bharati Mukherjee is Professor of English at Berkley, University of California.  Her short story “The Management of Grief” and earlier book “The Sorrow and the Terror” are based on conversations with bereaved families of a high profile air disaster, the bombing of an Air India plane off the Irish coast in 1985 which killed all 329 on board, most of them holiday-bound families who were Canadians of Indian extraction.

Photo Credit: Tennessee Reed

Barbara J. King is an American anthropologist at the College of William and Mary in Virginia with a long-standing research interest in primate behaviour and human evolution. She has studied baboon foraging in Kenya and gorilla communication at captive facilities in the United States. Her latest book is called How Animals Grieve. 

Barbara King’s idea is to make ownership of a chicken compulsory for all children. She believes that during primary school, every child should be required to care for a chicken for at least one year’s time: a named chicken who lives in a well-cared-for, free-ranging social group of hens and roosters. Through their natural curiosity and love of nature, our children would in this way learn that it’s not only dogs and cats but other animals too who go through their days thinking and feeling about their own important concerns.