Contents -- List of Figures -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION Rough Passages, Reinvented Rites -- CHAPTER 1 Celebrating New Life, Ritually Nurturing the Young -- Pulling up My Skin for Laces -- You Have a Compass within You -- Children Are Not Born but Made -- Male Mothering -- Begreasing and Bespewing Poor Infants -- Churching and Gossiping -- Appropriate Craziness, Extravagant Praise -- Cosmic Fetuses and Bundle Babies -- Kneeling on the Earth -- A Birth Well Attended -- Nurturing Ritual Sensibilities -- The Dove Still Travels with Me -- Reinventing Birth Rites -- CHAPTER 2 Coming of Age, Joining Up -- Initiation as a Global Problem -- The Reality of My Own Body -- Patterns of Initiation -- Initiation around the World -- Initiatory Fantasy -- The Improved Order of Red Men -- Betwixt and Between -- Debt Payments, Whippings, and Washings -- Bartering a Traditional Celebration -- Initiatory Wonder -- Initiatory Disenchantment -- He Emerged as One of Them -- Reinventing Initiation Rites -- African American Rites of Passage -- CHAPTER 3 Divining Mates, Making Kin -- Wedding Preparation, Wedding Aftermath -- The Purity of an Angel, the Sweat of a Human -- Reaching through the Veil -- Like a Horse and Carriage? -- The Most Splendid Couple in All of Japan -- The Sacred Fire Was Our Witness -- Married Already or Not Yet? -- Old Enough to Be the Father of His Bride -- Passing the Torch, Blessing the Bride -- From Blessing Marriages to Making Them -- Alternative Weddings -- Reinventing Marriage Rites -- CHAPTER 4 Living with the Dead, Exiting Gracefully -- Good Ways to Die -- Dying Scenarios -- It Took Two Funerals to Bury My Brother -- A Coffin Lined with Paper -- A Cloud of Earth for a Pillow -- Living with the Dead -- The Release of a Hungry Ghost -- Dancing with the Dead -- The American Way of Death -- Dead, He Presides Over Us -- Mortal Acts.

Cyber Ritual and Death on the Web -- Reinventing Death Rites -- CHAPTER 5 Passages, Troubled and Uncharted -- The Spilling of Boys' Blood -- Female Genital Mutilation -- Ritual Criticism and Widow Burning -- Satanic Ritual Abuse -- Never "Instead of," Always "in Addition to" -- Abortion Rites in Japan -- Until Grief Leaves the Forefront of My Being -- The Roller-Coaster of Joy and Woe -- Cutting the Cord of Employment -- CONCLUSION Beyond Passage -- Crying in the Night -- Boiling Energy -- 'Babette's Feast' -- Notes -- Sources Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.