My Body Lives Like a Threat - by Megha Sood (Paperback)

About the Book

A deep exposition of gender and color-based discrimination, sexual and reproductive rights violations, body politics, immigration, and the impact of a toxic political environment on the country and its people.

Book Synopsis

"My Body Lives Like a Threat "is a deep exposition of gender and color-based discrimination, sexual and reproductive rights violations, body politics, immigration, and the impact of a toxic political environment on the country and its people. The full length has been divided into five sections namely "Black Truth", "War and Peace", "My Body is Not an Apology", "A Just Immigration Policy" and "My Body Lives Like a Threat" that deals with the poems reflecting the blatant violation of human rights and the systemic oppression of the people of color in this country and around the world. The book reflects how body politics never remains at an individual level but molds and morphs into a social monster birthing problem like human rights violation, immigration, gun violence, and racial discrimination. This collection is not only a reflection of individual rights violations but also addresses the human rights violation in today's toxic political environment as a whole. This book highlights my journey, gives it a voice, and strengthens the fact that how the body is so central as a whole yet it remains invisible and still acts as a threat.

Review Quotes

Megha Sood's first collection My Body Lives Like a Threat provokes and inspires. In her powerful voice, the author personalizes the political as in Transformation, Asphyxiated, and A Nation in a Chokehold. In this collection, bodies are prayers, safe-havens, and an eye of the storm. There is hope in these poems too: "...we expose our deepest and softest parts to heal ... that's

how the body learns ..."

- Maria Lisella, 2020 Fellow Academy of American Poets and Queens Poet Laureate

With its stunning imagery and beautifully crafted lines, My Body Lives Like Threat functions like a hand cupping our chins and turning our faces to that which we are too afraid to see alone. The world is difficult and filled with injustice, look. The world is broken and littered with boundaries, violence,

and injured dreams. Look, look, do not look away. This is the collection that will build a new city over the bones of decaying patriarchy, and Megha Sood is the poet who will stand in the middle of that city, lantern-lit, leading us, with her words, to a better way.

- Melissa Studdard, Poet and Author

Deeply conscious of her location as an immigrant and a woman, Megha Sood creates in My Body Lives Like a Threat a conduit for the voices of the vulnerable and oppressed in the United States. Through unrelenting images of pain and suffering, the poems bear witness to the history of brutality

against African Americans and other immigrant groups, refusing to numb the pain wrought by injustice, since peace is "the metaphor of denial." Megha's powerful words find their resonance in the pause between language and action, where community and consciousness overcome voices of privilege. Despite the burden of patriarchy and state violence, in Megha's poetry, solace

lies with both grief and love.

- Pramila Venkateswaran, Author of The Singer of Alleppey and Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island

Megha Sood weaves stark reality with vibrant images to create a surreal yet sharp understanding of the complexity of humanity. Each piece entices you to the next, drawing you further into the heart of this body of work. Living. Vibrant. Unapologetic. Powerful. Once I started, I couldn't stop reading."

- Rescue Poetix, Poet, Author, Performer and 2021-22 Poet Laureate of Jersey City, New Jersey

Megha Sood's My Body Lives Like a Threat is an impassioned and unflinching war cry against racial and gendered violence and oppression. Laced with Dante-esque, vividly visceral imagery, the poet poses a series of potent and compelling questions - "Does scream have a religion? Do cries have a race? Does hurt have a gender?". Railing against a catalog of griefs, from deeply personal to global "pain like a stray dog"- the "razor-sharp vernacular of death", "raging inequality" and "a cornrow of failed desires", the poet rebels against "a million slithering tongues" and the "putrid stench of indifference" in a world where systemic suppression "takes the shape of a chokehold". Much as

this book is a fervent and unflinching war cry, it is also a cry from the heart, a bloody-knuckled digging for hope.

- Anne Casey, Author of Out of Emptied Cups, Award-Winning Poet and Writer

Just to gain a little insight between interstices, I recommend the reader starts with the title poem before being wooed and devoured by Megha's craft's excellent attention to her social justice perspective. The line that sells the book for me is: every time I twist my tongue to shape a word, I mispronounce your fear "a new threat is born."

- Jacquese Armstrong, Author of Blues legacy (c)2019, Winner of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award

My Body Lives Like a Threat by Megha Sood is a collection of poetry that speaks to the feeling(s) of many people living all over the w