Pre-order: Mother Wound by Gauri Awasthi

NOTE: This book releases October 1. Books will be shipped in mid-September.

Mother Wound examines the inheritance of trauma through the lens of a daughter's experience of domestic violence and emotional abuse. These raw, vivid poems grapple with questions of identity as a girl becoming a woman, as well as a non-citizen living between homes, between countries. Structured around the rhythm cycle of Indian classical music (SA-RE-GA-MA-PA-DHA-NI-SA, equivalent to Western Solfège), Mother Wound explores the meaning of each note, mirroring the cycle of generational trauma that passes through women, echoed through language and recurring motifs, in the end composing songs of words to create shrines of safety and healing.

"Some books ask for our attention. Then others ask for our empathy. Gauri Awasthi's Mother Wound asks for our courage in facing the mythologies that keep us from embracing the hurt where violence was wrought. This is poetry meant to restore our wholeness, language that feels like 'the true color of love.'"

• Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems 2002-2022