{"product_id":"the-marrow-of-longing-9781990137068","title":"The Marrow of Longing","description":"\u003cp\u003eA descendent of Armenian genocide survivors on her mother's side, Simon Fraser University professor Celeste Nazeli Snowber explores the relationship between longing, belonging, and identity. In \u003cem\u003eThe Marrow of Longing, \u003c\/em\u003eher third book of poetry, Snowber traces her own aches of heart, intergenerational trauma, yearnings of body and the lessons learned in kitchen conversations to uncover universal themes and, in doing so, she effectively leads readers to discover what has shaped their own lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe inherited trauma of the Armenian genocide marked Snowber's childhood. Her poems express both the sense of loss which that event created within the culture and the counterbalancing satisfaction of being a survivor and witness. In reflecting on her own childhood, \u003cem\u003eThe Marrow of Longing \u003c\/em\u003eexplores universal experiences: fragmented memories of grandparents, parents' love letters, prayers in the night, cooking in the kitchen, and relationship to place. \"Fragments can hold a world,\" says Snowber.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSnowber's work is always both deeply personal and deeply interpersonal. In excavating her own vulnerabilities and longings she invites the reader into a community of reflection. \"look beneath the surface \/ how many dimensions\/ one object, one heart holds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Motherhood is a recurring theme within\u003cem\u003e The Marrow of Longing. \u003c\/em\u003eSnowber recalls the lessons learned in kitchen conversations with her mother: the biographical details, the recipes of the old country, the wisdom of the ancestors. \"My mother had an \/ eggplant soul \/ a beauty of both \/ dark and light \/ rough and tender...the meeting of art and life \/ just beneath the skin of plum black.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn other poems, Snowber speaks directly to her ancestral homeland as a living entity, \"I am letting you \/ wash over me Armenia \/ stone to stone \/kachkar to kachkar, \/ lavash to lavash\/ ... dance my olive skin \/ on your baptized land.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSnowber, Celeste Nazeli:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD is a dancer, poet, writer, award-winning educator and Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Celeste creates site-specific performance and has been the Artist in Residence in the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden creating full-length performances connecting poetry and dance out of each season. Celeste also creates one-woman shows integrating voice, comedy, and dance and has performed across North America and Internationally in a variety of venues, including concerts, galleries, museums, conferences and outdoor spaces. Celeste's mother was born in Historic Armenia in 1912 before immigrating to Boston and integral to Celeste's own artistic process is excavating fragments of ancestral memory, which find their way in poems and dances. She can be found at www.celestesnowber.com\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOdabashian, Marsha Nourtiza:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Boston-based artist and MFA, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian's drawings and paintings uniquely reflect the tension and expansiveness of being raised in dual cultures, Armenian and American. As a young child, she watched her mother cultivate the Armenian tradition of dyeing eggs red by boiling them in onion skins. In her work, vignettes of current events, history and social justice emerge from the onionskin dye on paper, stretched canvas or compressed cellulose sponge. Odabashian studies early and medieval Armenian art and architecture at Tufts University with Professor Christina Maranci, with whom she traveled to Aght'amar and Ani in Historic Armenia. Pairing her ancestral past with the present in her art is her means of fulfillment. She can be found at www.marshaodabashian.com.","brand":"Harp Publishing the People's Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50382185267474,"sku":"9781990137068","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d5cb95b0-1231-42b3-a4d0-6a90dc653aef.jpg?v=1728706913","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-marrow-of-longing-9781990137068","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}