Full Description
Choman Hardi's Considering the Women explores the equivocal relationship between immigrants and their homeland - the constant push and pull - as well as the breakdown of an intermarriage, and the plight of women in an aggressive patriarchal society and as survivors of political violence. The book's central sequence, Anfal, draws on Choman Hardi's post-doctoral research on women survivors of genocide in Kurdistan. The stories of eleven survivors (nine women, an elderly man and a boy child) are framed by the radically shifting voice of the researcher: naive and matter-of-fact at the start; grieved, abstracted and confused by the end. Knowledge has a noxious effect in this book, destroying the poet's earlier optimistic sense of self and replacing it with a darker identity where she is ready for 'all the good people in the world to disappoint her'. Choman Hardi's second collection in English ends with a new beginning found in new love and in taking time off from the journey of traumatic discovery to enjoy the small, ordinary things of life. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Contents
Before You Leave Memory Bias Crossing Back The Maths Lesson A Woman Before Her Time Homeland! What Shall Do With You? A Man's Honour The Heroes One Moment For Halabja The Silent Visit The Anfal Sequence Preface: Researcher's Speech The 1984 Negotiations Gas Attack Escaping Kanitu, March 1988 Arrest At Milla Sura Dibs Camp, The Women's Prison The Child At The Pits The Elderly From Nugra Salman Camp The Gas Survivor Dispute Over A Mass Grave The No-survivor Village The Angry Survivor Researcher's Blues Her Autumn Istikhara Your Dress Bawka Unanswered The New Bedroom Adila's Apple The Housewarming Gift The Seventh Wedding Invitation My English Years Divisions The Picture Conversations Our Different Worlds My English Years Time Out Shetland, 1469 Leaves As Clouds Slide Across The Sky His Blue Sky The Couple The Husband The Wife The Three Dancers, 1925 Blackout Flights A Day For Love
