In Her Feminine Sign

Fiction & Literature, Poetry
Cover of the book In Her Feminine Sign by Dunya Mikhail, New Directions
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Author: Dunya Mikhail ISBN: 9780811228770
Publisher: New Directions Publication: July 30, 2019
Imprint: New Directions Language: English
Author: Dunya Mikhail
ISBN: 9780811228770
Publisher: New Directions
Publication: July 30, 2019
Imprint: New Directions
Language: English

A brilliant poetic exploration of language and gender, place, and time, seen through the mirror of exile

In Her Feminine Sign follows on the heels of Dunya Mikhail's devastating account of Daesh kidnappings and killings of Yazidi women in Iraq, The Beekeeper. It is the first book she has written in both Arabic and English, a process she talks about in her preface, saying "The poet is at home in both texts, yet she remains a stranger." With a subtle simplicity and disquieting humor reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska and an unadorned lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail shifts between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, between a game of chess and a flamingo. At the heart of the book is the symbol of the tied circle, the Arabic suffix taa-marbuta—a circle with two dots above it that determines a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, three kidnapped women, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. A section of "Iraqi haiku" unfolds like Sumerian symbols carved onto clay tablets, transmuted into the stuff of our ordinary, daily life. In another poem, Mikhail defines the Sumerian word for freedom, Ama-ar-gi, as "what seeps out / from the dead into our dreams."

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

A brilliant poetic exploration of language and gender, place, and time, seen through the mirror of exile

In Her Feminine Sign follows on the heels of Dunya Mikhail's devastating account of Daesh kidnappings and killings of Yazidi women in Iraq, The Beekeeper. It is the first book she has written in both Arabic and English, a process she talks about in her preface, saying "The poet is at home in both texts, yet she remains a stranger." With a subtle simplicity and disquieting humor reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska and an unadorned lyricism wholly her own, Mikhail shifts between her childhood in Baghdad and her present life in Detroit, between Ground Zero and a mass grave, between a game of chess and a flamingo. At the heart of the book is the symbol of the tied circle, the Arabic suffix taa-marbuta—a circle with two dots above it that determines a feminine word, or sign. This tied circle transforms into the moon, a stone that binds friendship, birdsong over ruins, three kidnapped women, and a hymn to Nisaba, the goddess of writing. A section of "Iraqi haiku" unfolds like Sumerian symbols carved onto clay tablets, transmuted into the stuff of our ordinary, daily life. In another poem, Mikhail defines the Sumerian word for freedom, Ama-ar-gi, as "what seeps out / from the dead into our dreams."

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