Natality (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781934819661)

NATALITY is an epic poem, a palimpsestic narrative-body that confronts the tyranny of jealousy by multiplying narrative possibilities at every turn, troubling fixed assumptions of identity through the (im)possibility of rebirth. The biblical figures Hagar and Sarai have been read through a narrative of jealousy as early as the 6th century B.C.E. when Abrahamic lore had its written beginnings. From the fractured grounds of familial, communal, and (inter)national turmoil emanate the voices of Hagar and Sarai in the news, familial lore, Renaissance paintings, video-games, texts, etc. Their voices merge, come undone, lay side by side, untouch, stain, mar, beautify, knot and unknot. Attentive to failure and irredeemable loss NATALITY unearths ancestral trauma from the past and weaves it thoroughly into the present.