Consensual Genocide by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha


Consensual Genocide
Title : Consensual Genocide
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1894770293
ISBN-10 : 9781894770293
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 80
Publication : First published January 1, 2006

This long-awaited first collection of poetry by queer Sri Lankan writer and spoken-word artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is full of the stories we've been waiting for. Tracing bloodlines from Sri Lanka's civil wars to Brooklyn and Toronto streets, these fierce poems are full of heart and guts, telling raw truths about brown girl border crossings before and after 9/11, surviving abuse, mixed-race journeys and high femme rebellions. Consensual Genocide celebrates our survival and marks our rebel memories into history.

Consensual Genocide Reviews

  • Nathaniel

    “1. HOW DID YOUR LIFE CHANGE AFTER SEPTEMBER 11????

    After everything I’ve made it through, it made me want to die
    I didn’t want to live in fascism live on TV
    staring me dead in the eye with a retina scanner
    and my prints on universal ID
    I didn’t want to live after they preemptively nuked
    a place             not where I’m from
    but mine nonetheless
    We are all Afghani now             all us brown folks
    Nepali to native
    it doesn’t matter to them”

    (from “I didn’t wand the end times / to be like this: 9/11 in seven slams”)

    4.5

  • Carol

    Straight-to-the-point -- Leah Laksmhmi's direct, present writing style makes this collection of her works very accessible and powerful. Her struggle, pain, triumph around her identity, and politics - actively whitewashed by her mother, passively let go by her father -- and her ongoing journey to claim and reclaim her ancestry are the resonating themes in a good portion of her work.
    I found her work refreshing, fresh.

  • Samantha

    3.75 stars. I can't say I'm fully on board with the title of this collection, but other than that, queer Sri Lankan badass poet is all you need to know.

  • Amanda Torres

    4.5

  • Steph Mecham

    4.5

  • ry

    This has been going on for twenty years
    but people still go on
    feeding chickens
    growing pumpkins
    commuting to work

    If she asked me the state of my heart
    I would say
    that what I am capable of
    is continuing
    I want to love my way through scar tissue

    from she asked me what my heart was like and I said it was like sri lanka

  • Kari B

    Breathtakingly phenomenal read. Very short, but exhilarating nonetheless. The discussions of finding love or being in love in the diaspora, comparing body masses to landscapes, the discussion of survivorship and critiques of the remnants of colonization all fits itself into 73 pages of pure, raw, poetic excellence. Highly recommend.

  • Sinthu Srikanthan

    not really a fan of the title.

  • Amy

    "eating a $5 plate of string hoppers, I think of my father", "landmine heart" and "At the naturopath's"...

    damn.

  • Hannah

    Basically I feel like it's a privilege for me to be allowed to read these poems.

  • Faith

    Sri Lanka, to Brooklyn, to Toronto, seen through the eyes of a queer daughter of parents who grew up in Ceylon, the country now known as Ceylon. Rich, ironic, political, worldly.

  • Madeleine

    😍 always. One of my favorite writers of poetry.