SHARUM Writer Releases Debut Poetry Collection CUT WOMAN

SHARUM co-writer Dena Igusti goes from theater to poetry, navigating grief with her forthcoming book Cut Woman, published with Game Over Books.

A year after the Players Theater premiere of SHARUM, a documentary theater piece that navigates the lives of a Pakistani Muslim family in Queens, NYC as they battle mental health, arranged marriage, drug addiction, and queer identity, co-writer Dena Igusti navigates her personal identity through her debut book Cut Woman. Cut Woman is a collection of poems that tackle grief, loss, and anticipatory mourning as a result of Igusti's experiences as a Muslim Indonesian survivor of female genital mutilation.

"One of the things I love most is when a poetry book forces me to slow down, to linger in every pause between breaths and reckon with the awareness that Reading is, itself, an act of consumption." George Abraham, author of Birthright (Button Poetry) says in Cut Woman's blurb. "Dena Igusti is a poet of undying urgency - this is a bold, heart-shattering chapbook debut."

While SHARUM was an exploration of Muslim livelihood, Cut Woman focuses on navigating death, challenging our perceptions of the afterlife. "With a deft, devoted hand, Dena Igusti weaves alienation, grief, desire, and defiance into an indelible tapestry of survival and celebration. They show us that mortality is not a deadline but a continuum. We will die, but we will also cry, and shout, and love, and dance, and live on." Teta Alim, founder of Buah Zine states.

Dena Igusti also hones in on what it means to be a Muslim survivor of female genital mutilation, and the honest relationship with her body in the midst of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

"Igusti's work asks what is the metaphysical conceit of the cut? from whom or what are we cut? what are the rules of being cut & the life after? when they cut they cut the american light with their brown flicker, they incise the language, they puncture a privilege, & they work with inherited blood. This is a play of radical vulnerability around the self, a play of no games." says Trace DePass, author of Self Portrait As the Space Between Us (PANK).

Dena Igusti's book is now available for pre-order at Game Over Books. You can purchase the book here.

To post a comment, you must register and login.