Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Bodymap Reviews

• 
  CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian

  If you’ve never read anything by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, you probably have no idea how much of a real treat you’re in for when you pick her latest poetry collection, Bodymap. It’s her strongest set of poetry yet. Lyrically these are a tight set of poems, filled with gorgeous, evocative images. They’re visceral, tough but soft, just like the hard femmes some of the poems are about, as well as Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha herself. In fact, the poem “my city is a hard femme” was definitely one of my favourites:
  
  When I left Worcester, I took the smirk I learned from the side
  
  walk with me,
  
  the girl gang of wild weed trees busting through every
  
  vacant lot like a bank robbery
  
  kicking down the door with the grin of getting everything for free.
  
  I’m as hard-assed as every pretty broken thing in town,
  
  every donut shop that’ll tell you off in a heartbeat,
  
  every dress with just one fucked-up thing
  
  dug out of the Auburn TJ Maxxx quadruple clearance rack.
  
  My city is a lovely tough girl
  
  asking you what the fuck you’re looking at,
  
  all fitted up in skintight dirty redbrick & vinyl siding
  
  My city a broken
  
  beautiful bitch
  
  with a necklace of junk trees blooming
  
  from her throat.
  
  See my whole review here:
  http://wp.me/p2tLy0-qP
• 
  Book Riot Community

  I don’t read a lot of poetry, but it’s collections like this that make me realize I should correct that. Bodymap deals with race, sexuality, class, and disability, always handling with these topics as intersecting aspects of everyday life, not as abstract theories. Piepzna-Samarasinha plays with tone and form throughout, but it says grounded and accessible. I spent most of Bodymap impatient to be rereading it, because I know that I’m going to get more out of it every time. I read this as an ebook, but I’ll be buying a physical copy and probably at least one more copy to give away. This is the sort of poetry that punches you in the gut, which is exactly the best kind. — Danika Ellis
  
  
  from The Best Books We Read In August:
  http://bookriot.com/2015/08/31/riot-r...
• 
  Tyler J Gray

  Poetry about being a queer disabled femme of color. Raw, emotional, heart-breaking, thought-provoking, beautiful. I related to some of it, being queer and disabled myself. I am not femme (though I am AFAB) or a poc. What I couldn't relate to still moved me to tears. I don't have words for how amazing this book of poetry is. Poetry for me seems to be either hit or miss and this was one hell of a hit!
• 
  Bogi Takács

  I find it easiest to review books which I liked but had some issues with, because then I can discuss those issues at length. Truly awful and genuinely wonderful books can sometimes take a backseat, which then results in me not posting about some of my favorite books.
  
  Bodymap was wonderful.
  
  
  Read the rest on Bogi Reads the World! Also includes a bookstagram pic :)
• 
  Melissa

  Poetry isn't usually my go to when it comes to reading but something about this book of poetry, the way the book seller at Elliot Bay Book Company was saying wonderful things about the author's writing talents and the fact that it's not easy to find poetry written from a Brown, Queer disabled person's point of view is what sold me on reading it.
  
  I can't wait to read more poetry that's been written by Leah and hopefully by reading this book it will lead me to find other books of poetry written by Queer POC.
• 
  Ocean

  damn, this book. this book! first poems i've read in a long time that stopped me dead, feeling a truth reverberate through my sternum (which ms. piepzna-samarsinha describes, so lovingly, as the exact location of her home). this book made me want to run to the copy shop and copy poems and mail them to friends who need to hear these words but don't have $20 to purchase a book right now, who can't wait six months or a year for it to show up in their library because they need to hear it now. they needed to hear it a year ago, ten years ago, and this book is finally here. i want make copies of some of these poems & burn them so my beloved dead can read them. my god. this book. I think it can save lives. I fully believe that it has the power to save lives--not just in the physical sense but the emotional, the spiritual. the poems are about survival as a queer brown crip femme, about trauma, about hot sex. about the ways that your biological fam can let you down and the ways that your chosen fam can abandon you too. about pain and growth and cycles. you probably need this book--either as a roadmap to your own survival or to better understand the lives of those you love. seriously. do what you have to do to get your hands on it (but don't steal from independent bookstores plz!). read. this. book.
• 
  Samantha Stanek

  My review of Bodymap (contains spoilers):
  
  This was a new kind of poetry for me as my exposure prior to this was primarily the voice of a white male and stemming from American & British Classic Literature. I very much enjoyed it! It's likely hard to find a form of poetry I won't love.
  Lean has a way with words that cuts deep to the soul. The way she writes is almost metaphorical of her own self-described character and it oozes the unpredictable. She extends the bounds of intimacy, erotically and soulfully. I look forward to reading other works by her. I was challenged many times to recognize my own privilege as an able-bodied, white person and it seems to me Leah knows she's doing this in her poetry, it's a part of the point/muse/style.
  
  Some of my most favorite poems and lines:
  - bodymap, "I can already feel where we will make each other's bodies new"
  - a million dollars
  - mulberries
  - everyone thinks you're so lazy. don't let them
  - 2. Melanin night sky full of stars, "Your cosmos is still the most beautiful one I have ever swim in."
  - enough
  - "because your youth not killing themselves and growing up to be happy queers who make art is your PhD and your MacArthur Genius"
• 
  ellis

  absolutely incredible.
  RTC
• 
  Kora Dzbinski

  could read 100000 poems about canceling dates & messy trauma work & falling in (& out of) love despite despite despite & it wouldn’t be enough !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! always grateful for leah
• 
  B Malley

  Honestly kind of life-changing!
• 
  Rachel

  2.5* I did not finish this poetry collection. I got about halfway through and it was okay. I liked the title poem a lot.
• 
  mak

  wow now cut to the scene of me hiding my crying on the porch as my neighbors walk by
• 
  Kat

  Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing gave words and made tangible my experiences as a queer person of color who has grown up disabled and in chronic pain. I revisit this book when I feel alone and isolated and I have shared many of their poems with people I care about
• 
  Jacob Wren

  Some lines from Bodymap:
  
  
  
  I want you to love me
  after the lipstick wears off
  
  
  
  white bois with eager buts
  and nonprofit movement jobs you wanted
  are just like whole foods take out:
  when you are too tired
  you can pay too much
  for a tasteless version of your culture
  that promises it won’t kill you.
  afterwards, a greasy crunched compostable box
  and debit charge so much more expensive
  than you budgeted for.
  
  
  
  This border is rotten meat, a hallucination, a wavering line
  a stupid idea. Can’t we blink and it'll be gone?
  
  
  
  you know your words are like every indie rapper's third album. it’s weird at the not really top.
  
  
  
  and then go explode the whole known world
  which is like explore but with just one letter different
  you know.
  
  
  
  .
  
• 
  Mo

  Wow. I loved getting lost in these poems, especially after I slowed down and started reading no more than a few of them at a time. Every single poem felt like reading a perfect love letter--the kind that feels candid and unsentimental and makes me feel like part of something gorgeous. If you want to explore some of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's work, there are a few great videos here:
  http://www.sinsinvalid.org/video.html
• 
  Lauren

  a fantastic book of poetry
• 
  Sam Long

  Visceral and unapologetic, this collection of poems is hard femme incarnate. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasihna writes on disability through the lens of a queer femme-of-color and pens a love song exploring desire, survival, sickness, grief, and the moments that make life worth it.
  
  Blood is spilled in these pages, and Piepzna-Samarasinha allows us to experience the extent of hurt, acknowledge, and emerge with scraped knuckles, smeared lipstick, and so much kindness to the people that matter.
  
  “When I left Worcester, I took the smirk I learned from the side-walk with me,
  the girl gang of wild weed trees bursting through every vacant lot like a bank robbery
  kicking down the door with the grin of getting everything for free.
  I’m as hard-assed as every pretty broken thing in town,
  every donut shop that’ll tell you off in a heartbeat,
  every dress with just one fucked-up thing
  dig out of the Auburn TJ Maxxx quadruple clearance rack.
  
  My city is a lovely tough girl
  asking you what the fuck you’re looking at,
  all fitted up in skintight red brick & vinyl siding
  
  My city a broken beautiful bitch with
  a necklace of junk trees blooming
  from her throat”
  
  -my city is a hard femme, body map, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
• 
  ace

  mulberries
  
  “you will not know you wanted someone to make you full like that. until that moment, when they do.” (20)
  
  “our survival is / the opposite of lazy” (24)
  
  “6. washing dishes for you is foreplay so your rsi wrists can be strong enough to fuck me later.” (26)
  
  “just me being the slut that kept me alive” (35)
  
  “When I think of my crip dating life, half of what I think of is all the times I’ve had to cancel.” “...both our bodies were unpredictable.” “We dated through our dates and through our cancellations” (35 & 36)
  
  “... there was something hot about our trauma-and-abuse flirtation, about how we were moving so, so, slow.” (39)
  
  “that all my body / and all yours / got to love each other / without changing a goddamn thing” (48)
  
  maestra teacher: a rebel teacher manifesta song in many parts
  
  what kind of ancestor do you want to be?
  
  “this is the truth: every worst thing you can imagine will come true.” .... “the answer is in what comes after. what you answered the worst thing in the world with.” (97)
• 
  Diana

  I read an excerpt via audio messages to the girl I am talking to. Specifically the section where her dating life with one of her lovers consisted of more cancellations and reschedules than actually dating each other...
• 
  Elisabeth

  It would feel weird giving this a star rating because I don't think this collection is for me - it seems like a very personal account of experiences I haven't had and can't relate to, and while I enjoyed getting a glimpse into a different life, as poetry it just was not my cup of tea.
• 
  Corinne

  I picked this book up for poetry month. I would like to come back to it. It was very compelling writing. I just have to be in the right mood for it and it was taking me a long time to get through it so I'm going to take a break from it.
• 
  Emory Black

  Thank you for this Leah. This is a collection of poems about life, really. A few resonated with me personally, and a few were just nice to read.
• 
  Anai Finnie

  I wouldn’t let my grandfather look at it when he asked, so that’s what’s up with this one.
• 
  Jacob

  Very powerful. The evocative language added to the personality of each of the works in this collection. But as with all collected works, some pieces were better than others.
• 
  Marie-Christine Lemieux-Couture

  Beautiful, captivating, powerful poetry work on what it is to be a disabled queer femme of color.
• 
  LJ

  Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing always blows me away. This was no exception.
• 
  mx. mothman

  This collection changed my life. I'm not exaggerating. Piepzna-Samarasinha talks about her disabled body in a way that helped me begin to heal my relationship with mine.
• 
  Eliza

  This was a beautiful and ruthless collection that I'm sure I will revisit.
• 
  Queerromani

  Everything about this collection. . . I could not have enjoyed this work more.