Blood and Lightning!
Publishers Weekly:
“Charming and thoughtful slice of life.”
Chicago Review of Books:
“Landmark study.”
Forward Reviews:
”An illuminating peek behind the doors.”
Booklist:
”A stellar and vivid depiction.”
The Seattle Times:
“Resonates with many of the deepest themes of humanity.”
Winner! Independent Publisher Book Award. Silver in “Coffee Table Book”
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"Combining memoir and ethnography, Blood and Lightning explores how the practice of tattooing sits at the intersection of people, bodies, and money [...] Kiskaddon is thorough in his reflection and wide in his scope [...] Blood and Lightning is a landmark study of the craft of tattooing that is consistently compelling and rewarding.
Chicago Review of Books, “12 Must-Read Books of February 2024”
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"Written in an easygoing style, Kiskaddon’s narrative ends up as much a workplace memoir as an anthropological study, where the work being documented is both tattooing and ethnography itself."
Publishers Weekly
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"Blood and Lightning is a stellar and vivid depiction of an industry that has long been mythologized in popular culture. Kiskaddon's memoir offers a candid perspective on both the business and creative sides of tattooing. As it dives into a cultural rite of passage, Kiskaddon's work also excels as a character study."
Booklist
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"Blood and Lightning is an illuminating peek behind the doors of a tattoo shop, digging into the realities, ethics, and philosophy of altering the bodies of strangers."
Forward Reviews
What Dustin’s heroes are saying
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“THIS BOOK IS A TRUE IMMERSION INTO WHAT REMAINS AN OVERALL OBSCURE PRACTICE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC, IN SPITE OF ITS OMNIPRESENCE. TO A PRACTITIONER LIKE MYSELF, IT IS A WELCOME NEW ADDITION IN THE YET TENUOUS CORPUS OF TATTOO SCHOLARSHIP."
MAXIME PLESCIA-BÜCHI, Tattoo Artist, Founder of Sang Bleu studios
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“Blood and Lightning, like the work of the tattooers it documents, is a sensory experience that brings to life the vibrant ink colors, the smell of soap and client’s breath, the tactility of gloves and skin, the sound of tattoo machines, needles, and Thin Lizzy. The stakes are high as tattoers learn to balance the demands of their craft, clients, ink, and bodies. Kiskaddon offers rich reflections on questions of permanence, bodily awareness, and managing errors. A must-read.”
TERRENCE McDONNELL, coauthor of Measuring Culture
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“In Blood and Lightning, Kiskaddon eloquently unfolds the skills tattooers learn to navigate work that is loaded with pain, emotion, and physical intimacy. This is truly an excellent ethnography for anyone interested in the world of tattooing, as well as for students and scholars of labor and the cultural significance of bodies.”
KRISTEN BARBER, author of Styling Masculinity: Gender, Class, and Inequality in the Men’s Grooming Industry
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"Kiskaddon's sensuous ethnography takes behind the scenes in the mecca of tattooing—Oakland, California. His richly detailed prose sings as he describes his apprenticeship: learning the right touch, both needle-to-skin and with other members of this 'cool;' shop. More than any other ethnography I've read, this one breathes on the page: we inhale the sharp snap of isopropyl alcohol and the tang of sweat, while early Black Flag pumps out the speakers, thumping over the hum of machines, phone calls, and pain-filled exhalations of the clients."
JENNIFER C. LENA, author of Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts
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"Where television shows and film fail to capture the nuances (or reality) of the tattoo industry, this ethnography serves as an elegant and digestible reduction of modern western tattooing. Both entertaining and humanizing, Kiskaddon's trek through the deeper facets and darker issues of tattooing is a welcomed window to an often misunderstood world."
GORDON COMBS, Tattoo Artist
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“In Blood and Lightning, we don’t just enter the silent and physical spaces within the world of tattooing, instead the spaces are lived, examined, and connected to our humanity. Kiskaddon shows how tattoos, like history and storytelling itself, can evolve depending on the body or the world they occupy.”
DEVIN KATAYAMA, Senior Producer for NPR’s Throughline
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“Melding first-hand observation and sociological theory, Kiskaddon reveals how the act of tattooing—because its canvas is the human body—is always embroiled with culturally loaded ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. This book teaches us something beautiful about how people create mean- ing in an impersonal world. I hadn’t expected to encounter the sacred in the tattoo shop, but after reading Blood and Lightning, it’s clear as day.”
NEIL GONG, author of Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles
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“In this absorbing and theoretically rich embodied ethnography, Kiskaddon powerfully describes the bodily socialization, ethical quandaries, and intimate interactions with other people and their bodies he experienced through the process of becoming a tattooer. Blood and Lightning is at once funny and moving, a page-turner and a rigorously conceptual exploration of embodied labor.”
ASIA FRIEDMAN, author of Blind to Sameness: Sexpectations and the Social Construction of Male and Female Bodies
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" [...] Written in an easygoing style, Kiskaddon’s narrative ends up as much a workplace memoir as an anthropological study, where the work being documented is both tattooing and ethnography itself, with frequent references to taking field notes and finding ways to get interviews [...] It’s a charming and thoughtful slice of life."
Publishers Weekly