{"product_id":"this-way-back-9781949199666","title":"This Way Back","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Winning and contemplative.\" --\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review) \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Going back to her ancestral homeland, a Greek American girl discovers she is a lesbian in love with God, so her questions about home and belonging will not be easily answered. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis Way Back \u003c\/i\u003edramatizes a childhood split between Queens, New York, and Cyprus, an island nation with a long colonial history and a culture to which Joanna Eleftheriou could never quite adjust. The book avows a Greek-Cypriot-American lesbian's existence by documenting its scenes: reenacting an 1829 mass suicide by jumping off a school stage onto gym mats at St. Nicholas, harvesting carobs on ancestral land, purchasing UNESCO-protected lace, marching in the island's first gay pride parade, visiting Cyprus's occupied north against a dying father's wish, and pruning geraniums, cypress trees, and jasmine after her father grew too weak to lift the shears. While the author's life binds the essays in \u003ci\u003eThis Way Back \u003c\/i\u003einto what reads like a memoir, the book questions memoir's conventional boundaries between the individual and her community, and between political and personal loss, the human and the environment, and the living and the dead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoanna Eleftheriou is an assistant professor of English at Christopher Newport University. A contributing editor at \u003ci\u003eAssay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies\u003c\/i\u003e, she grew up in New York and Cyprus and now lives in Virginia. Her essays, short stories, and translations have been widely published. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"West Virginia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50478279393554,"sku":"9781949199666","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d3b59e65-0993-4d10-9353-4ae1bb3369d1.jpg?v=1730294124","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/this-way-back-9781949199666","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}