Ululations

In this powerful, evocative, and deeply personal anthology, Audrey Najor Hall invites us into a journey of self-discovery by sharing stunning, important life stories as poems.

Ululations: Sounding Out Cries of Joy Sorrow, and Celebration captures an experience highly prevalent in our world: sexual abuse, physical abuse, rape, incest, grief, loss, and the difficult process of recovery. The themes in the poems shift and evolve as the main character, 'Amira', a young Iraqi American woman in a first-generation family (e.g., both parents were not born in the US) progresses in her self-growth from being a 'victim' to a 'survivor' and, ultimately a 'thriver'. By not coming forward about such experiences, trauma can become re-enacted tragically from family generation to generation.

How do we stop this vicious cycle? The author begins by voicing the untold stories of many women through the main character to create new stories and new voices. Audrey's poignant yet subtle poems describe the experience of being a Chaldean-American woman, a Roman Catholic, struggling to find her identity in both cultures. This narrative book of poems reveals the duality of the pain and beauty of a culture that complicates the processes of recovery and forging an ethnic identity. The author puts words to Amira's silent stories, and then takes readers on a journey to mourn losses, find love, self-acceptance, and a rebirth of her sexuality, a new coming of age. Themes of love, grief and loss, sexuality, acculturation, assimilation, and self-empowerment weave throughout her beautiful poems. Net proceeds of Ululations go to charity.

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