DISINHABITED by emoody

PRESS 254 handmade Hybrid Genre/Poetry Chapbook. 32 pages.Saddle Stitched.

“Ambitious, provocative, and deeply meditative…easily one of the most compelling chapbooks I have read.” — Duriel E. Harris, author of Amnesiac: Poems

Disinhabited is a deftly innovative, hybrid work that is sure to resonate with readers and warrant multiple reads. What does it feel like to be split—ideologically, emotionally, and viscerally—between two worlds? This is the question emoody investigates in this chapbook, using a life-altering missionary foot washing trip to India that challenges her every certitude as a through line to discovery. Fusing text messages, diary entries, e-mails, photographs, prayers, and lyric poems into a gripping narrative, emoody allows readers to immerse themselves in her interrogation of gender, identity, and cultural disparities. Her desire to connect with Indian women, especially a teenage girl named Salou, provides a framework for self-reflection that ultimately questions the possibility of authentic engagement—both between others and within one’s self.