resisting the patriarchy collection

Patriarchy is…well…everywhere. It holds up most of our cultural, governmental, and economic structures, which in turn shape how we experience our day-to-day moments and the bigger arcs of our lives. Given these insidious and multitudinous encroachments, resistance takes many forms. The books in this collection challenge, question, and offer revisions to the dominant beliefs and narratives that form patriarchy itself.

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Individual Titles

Baby Book by Amy Ching-Yan Lam

How are beliefs formed? How can we overturn narratives of property and inheritance?
Direct and humorous, Baby Book stacks story upon story to explore how beliefs are first formed.

From a family vacation on a discount bus tour to a cosmogony based on cheese, these poems describe how everything is constantly, painfully remade—offering a vision against the stuck narratives of property and inheritance. In this book, power is located in the senses, in wind: multiple and restless.

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Autowar by Assiyah Jamilla Touré

We’re often told that we are given only what we can bear. For some of us our first lessons are in how much pain we’re made to think we deserve — and the resulting scars are always meant to be kept secret.

Assiyah Jamilla Touré’s debut collection is a record of those scars—not those inflicted on us by the thousands of little wars we live in everyday, but those that come afterwards, those we inflict upon ourselves to mark the path.

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Autowar by Assiyah Jamilla Toure
Moldovan Hotel by Leah Horlick

Moldovan Hotel by Leah Horlick

Moldovan Hotel delves into the intricate links between history, identity, and the ongoing battles against oppressive forces. Horlick’s journey to Romania provides a profound exploration of the interplay between personal ancestry and broader geopolitical struggles, from fascism’s echoes to present-day challenges like land disputes and queer rights.

This book stands out as a testament to the importance of understanding our past to navigate the complex battles of the present, appealing to readers interested in the interconnectedness of personal journeys and global histories.

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Girlwood by Jennifer Still

For readers remembering or entering the wild ride down into the privacies and the here-and-goneness of girlhood. These songs of liberation and confinement arise from the rich and mysterious connection between mother and daughter.

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Girlwood by Jennifer Still
Reunion by Deanna Young

Reunion by Deanna Young

Reunion intricately weaves the journey of revisiting and reconciling with one’s past, showcasing the relentless endeavor to reclaim the untouched essence of selfhood. This book captures the brave battle against internal ghosts and traumas, offering readers a moving narrative on self-discovery and transformation.

For those intrigued by introspection and the challenges of personal healing, “Reunion” promises a deep dive into the complexities of identity and self-redemption.

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Horrible Dance by Avery Lake

For readers seeking to understand gender-based violence and dismantle received definitions of both gender and violence. These are darkly comic, emotionally connected, playful, incisive, lyrical and irreverent poems.

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Horrible Dance by Avery Lake

Trailer Park Shakes by Justene Dion-Glowa

For readers unafraid to stand alongside the poet in bearing unflinching witness to the workings of injustice — how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love.

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MONUMENT by Manahil Bandukwala

By exploring buried facets of Mumtaz Mahal’s story in relation to the Taj Mahal’s construction, these poems upturn notions of love, monumentalisation, and empire. For readers who are asking: who are we when we keep making the same mistakes?

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Tell by Soraya Peerbaye

Tell: poems for a girlhood by Soraya Peerbaye

What happens when girlhood turns violent? What enables some people to escape adolescence unscathed while others do not? Why? Partially based on the Reena Virk murder case and the poet’s own remembrances of girlhood and the unease of adolescence.

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I Am the Big Heart by Sarah Venart

Poems that examine what it means to be, hope, or fail to be the big heart under the pressure of children, of self,, of partner, of death? This book is for readers who feel in themselves stirrings of wilder desires than family is supposed to nurture, feelings more fiercely self-assertive than a parent — a mother particularly — is supposed to admit.

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I Am the Big Heart by Sarah Venart
The Knowing Animals by Emily Skov-Nielsen

The Knowing Animals by Emily Skov-Nielsen

A book for those that need to hear poems sing, in various notes of female voice, the human being as an embodied, contemplative, feeling animal.

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Wild Madder by Brenda Leifso

These frank, bracingly recognizable poems will be irresistible — and cathartic — for anyone who has ever felt their life within systems of marriage and motherhood chewing them into little pieces.

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Wild Madder by Brenda Leifso
What Kind of Man Are You by Degan Davis

What Kind of Man Are You by Degan Davis

What does it mean to be a man now?

This bold and deeply moving book is for those asking how to move beyond societal taunt (prove yourself) and towards a more tender and inquisitive question (how to be a man in this era?).

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I, Nadja and Other Poems by Susan Elmslie

For readers seeking to understand how people become symbols, Susan Elmslie delves into the life and mental illness of the real person behind André Breton’s surrealist romance, Nadja, recovering the story of a flesh and blood woman who became a symbol for the unknowability of the feminine and the irrational side of the human psyche

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I, Nadja and Other Poems by Susan Elmslie