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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Mummy Eaters

Mummy Eaters

Paperback

Series: African Poetry Book

General Poetry

Publisher Price: $17.95

ISBN10: 1496232542
ISBN13: 9781496232540
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: Sep 1 2022
Pages: 104
Weight: 0.36
Height: 0.25 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Awards: National Book Awards
Winner of the 2023 American Book Award
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award

Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Sherry Shenoda's collection Mummy Eaters follows in the footsteps of an imagined ancestor, one of the daughters of the house of Akhenaten in the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt. Shenoda forges an imagined path through her ancestor's mummification and journey to the afterlife. Parallel to this exploration run the implications of colonialism on her passage.

The mythology of the ancient Egyptians was oriented toward resurrection through the preservation of the human body in mummification. Shenoda juxtaposes this reverence for the human body as sacred matter and a pathway to eternal life with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European fascination with ingesting Egyptian human remains as medicine and using exhumed Egyptian mummies as paper, paint, and fertilizer. Today Egyptian human remains are displayed in museums. Much of Mummy Eaters is written as a call and response, in the Coptic tradition, between the imagined ancestor and the author as descendant.

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Shenoda, Sherry

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General Poetry