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Mummy Eaters: African Poetry Book

Autor Sherry Shenoda Cuvânt înainte de Kwame Dawes
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 31 aug 2022

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2023 American Book Award
2022 Longlist for the National Book Awards

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Sherry Shenoda’s collection Mummy Eaters follows in the footsteps of an imagined ancestor, one of the daughters of the house of Akhenaten in the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt. Shenoda forges an imagined path through her ancestor’s mummification and journey to the afterlife. Parallel to this exploration run the implications of colonialism on her passage.

The mythology of the ancient Egyptians was oriented toward resurrection through the preservation of the human body in mummification. Shenoda juxtaposes this reverence for the human body as sacred matter and a pathway to eternal life with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European fascination with ingesting Egyptian human remains as medicine and using exhumed Egyptian mummies as paper, paint, and fertilizer. Today Egyptian human remains are displayed in museums. Much of Mummy Eaters is written as a call and response, in the Coptic tradition, between the imagined ancestor and the author as descendant.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781496232540
ISBN-10: 1496232542
Pagini: 104
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 7 mm
Greutate: 0.16 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria African Poetry Book

Locul publicării:United States

Notă biografică

Sherry Shenoda is a Coptic poet and pediatrician, born in Cairo, living near Los Angeles. Working at the intersection of human rights and child health, she serves as a pediatrician in a nonprofit health center. She is the author of The Lightkeeper: A Novel.
 
 

Extras

Ancestor Opening of the Mouth

A Daughter’s Long Wail
1339 bc, Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt/Kemet

Acacia flowers shield my breast.
I can almost smell tang of garlic

in meat they press into my mouth.
My first taste of love at mother’s breast.

The last now, of spiced wild gazelle.
May she aid me to run like the River.

I am Meritaten-tasherit, Beloved of Aten, the Younger.
My life rang of gold, lapis lazuli, hymns to Aten.

Crowned in carnelian and gold,
draped in youngest flax spun to linen,

I carried the sistrum behind my mother and sisters.
Then plague. My mother’s long wail.

Forty days have I lain in natron,
alone for my own preservation.

Now my eyes are opened.
Now my mouth is opened to

dark sweetness of date, ruby pomegranate,
brine of olive, smoke of River-fish.

My eyes can almost see neck hair rise on my hound,
slide of crocodile hide on River-banks.

My hands long for my cat’s purring warmth
beneath my palm, my sister’s soft coos.

My ears crane to the song of harp, sharp
clash of cymbals, and flute mischief.

My scalp craves the caress of dry wind,
stinging sand whipping my skin.

My heart remembers skipped beats to cobra danger
slithering and scattering grain mice.

I can almost smell heady sweet
blue lotus, the scent of Resurrection.

Now my eyes are opened.
Now my mouth is opened.
I am racing toward Life.
 

Cuprins

Foreword by Kwame Dawes
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Sunflowers of Fukushima: Invocation
Part I
Ancestor Opening of the Mouth: A Daughter’s Long Wail
Aftermath: A Mother’s Long Wai
Mummification: Early Lessons
From Mummification to the Incarnation
Descendant Ponders the Rising Cost of Dying
Makeup
Race against Time I
Shabti, Ushabti: “Answerer”
Descendant Ponders Space
Ancestor Dreams of the River Nile by a Dark Gate
Kemet, Nile
Descendants, in Memory of Our Family Farm
Ancestor Makes a Negative Confession
Etymologies: God
Descendant Mourns Akhenaten: A Lesser Hymn to One God
Apophatic Confession
To Become One of the Blessed Dead
Part II
Question
Etymologies: Mummy
Mummy Eaters
Immigration: “King (Deceased)”
Living Mummies
A Dealer Sits
Flesh Trade
Descendants Discuss Motivation, Your Honor
Descendants Discuss Literary Merits of Mummy Eating
Thomas Pettigrew Mansplains Mummies
How to Silence I: British Lessons
How to Silence II: Roman Lessons
Stolen Hour
How to Silence III: Greek Lessons
Race against Time II
Mummy Brown
Supply and Demand
Part III
Race against Time III
Descendant Talks Suffering with Old Aunties
Descendant Opening of the Eyes: A Daughter’s Long Wail
Descendant Interrogated about Suffering and Ancestry
Descendant Addresses French Boy: Skin Politics
Descendants Offer Prayer
Etymologies: Book of the Dead
Cairo, 1958
Descendants Discuss Definitives
Descendant Names Modern Mummy Eaters
Numbers
How to Silence: Mathematics Edition
True Mirror
Ancestor Calms Descendant’s Fears about Having Children in a World without Kemet
El Asar
How to Silence IV: Arabic Lessons
Ou-ta: How to Speak from Silence
Final Test
Letters for My Grandmothers
Notes and References

Recenzii

“I think of this book as a book of invocations. A shimmering history of histories. A wail in a chorus of wailing and a prayer in a chorus of prayers where time is pleated and beloved people and places who have passed into death are ‘alive, there, through the aperture of grief.’ This book is a prayer for time to ‘settle an aloe on mother’s heart.’ Such poems thrum with the brilliant, meditative attention of someone who learns from every thing. See: ‘Lend me, gazelle, your fleet hooves […] / I seek the Field of Reeds, the blue lotus. / Bring the cobra. I do not fear him.’ There is such deep intelligence, tenderness, and courage everywhere here.”—Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria

Descriere

Following in the footsteps of an imagined ancestor, one of the daughters of the house of Akhenaten in the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt, Sherry Shenoda forges an imagined path through her ancestor’s mummification and journey to the afterlife.

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