Body, Self, Separation: A review of Dena Igusti’s Cut Woman
By Darah Schillinger
In her debut collection, Cut Woman (2020), Dena Igusti explores the realities of being an Indonesian Muslim in a post-colonial world, and the separation of self they experienced as a survivor of female genital mutilation. Igusti’s writing is unique in that the language is authoritative even though the content itself is open and sincere, allowing us a naked view into the celebration and grief embedded into their experience as an Indonesian Muslim and as a survivor.
The anticipation of death is carried throughout the collection as the weight of loss hangs over the speaker’s everyday life. Death is a vessel of grief, an image Igusti can use to show in pictures exactly how all of this loss has made them feel, and how it has transformed their relationships with the self, their people, and loved ones.
“the grenade’s lung exhaled into our chests
and muslims have been spilled ever since”
-bounty
“IF THEY CAN'T FIND MY CORPSE THEY’LL AT LEAST
FIND A BODY (I CRAFT)”
-self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’
“i’m like my father
i leave half-carcasses // of me // everywhere i go”
“i think a lot // about death // for someone //
so afraid of dying”
-sacrifice (reprise), or trajectory
“I WANT TO
REMOVE // CELLS // DEAD, GENETIC // THAT HANG //
OFF MY BODY // HOLD TRACES OF WHAT // WAS DONE
TO ME WITHOUT BEING // SWALLOWED BY AN OCEAN”
-screen
The loss of self, the prospective loss of loved ones, the past loss of their people—all of this loss influences Igusti’s relationship with death. Death is preemptively mourned in Igusti’s work, something that weighs down the speaker and strings together the past and the present. Loss cannot be shed just as death cannot be avoided, and so Igusti embraces the inevitability of death to cope with the loss that already pervades their experiences.
Water and suffocation are used as one of the many forms of death found in the collection and are especially impactful in “my father never answers to papa” as saltwater acts as a metaphor for their father’s baggage and past mistakes, drowning them both. The speaker tries to drink the water, trying to save their father from his own grief and troubles, but the saltwater burns their throat, and their father takes even this time as they both drown because of his own problems, to blame his child. This poem is such a beautifully illustrated example of the weight of pain and past, showing how undealt with grief can drown not only yourself but your loved ones. Igusti has written true brilliance in describing the very real consequences of the unresolved, and how the mistakes of the father translate and choke the people they should love most.
Female genital mutilation is discussed throughout Igusti’s collection, exploring the separation the speaker feels between the self and their body in the aftermath of that experience and attempting to reconcile their complicated self-relationship through poetry.
“curse the // blade //
reduces // her // small // calls it //
transformation”
-hex for an heirloom
“she reduced me to small and called it transformation. She let me die
and called herself the martyr. She cut out part of me, made it my relative. A
blood bound thing.”
-sunat: a recollection (in the wake)
In “after the incision,” the speaker feels a disconnect between themself and their body because of what happened to them as a child and tries to reconcile this disconnect through conversation with the part they see as missing, personifying their clitoris and begging this missing part to return to them, saying they are hurt because the clitoris is not theirs anymore. The other-self then points out that the speaker’s feeling of loss doesn’t stem solely from the missing piece of their body in asking: “is that the only reason you feel loss?” Loss remains an overarching theme of the speaker’s experience, and they have projected this loss directly onto their body disconnect instead of confronting the other sources. This poem, and the broader discussion of bodily disconnect, acts as a powerful and jarring exploration of the places we store blame when grieving, and the reconciliation that may occur once we confront that blame.
White America appears in Igusti’s collection as its own self-imposed character, interjecting into the speaker’s life in an attempt to tell them who they are and make them question what they know. In “bounty,” the character of white America makes an uninvited appearance in the last stanza as a man who steals the identity of generations effortlessly:
“a man inhales an eighth of all our grandmothers
into his lungs, exhales
what his body didn’t take this time onto my chest
shouts
why the fuck are these muslims everywhere?”
The speaker sees this man as a broader representation of white people in America, breathing in the identities of Muslim women and spitting back hateful, ignore words, which remains an unfortunately accurate portrayal. In “altar,” the speaker describes how CNN’s description of what happened to them as a child as female genital mutilation disrupted their understanding of self, becoming victimized by a country they were “never supposed to set foot in.” The speaker writes:
“i feel obligation //
invite America in // white reporters and “saviors”
pour in by the dozens // break in everything in sight //
i ask // why have you ruined
everything? they say America”
This relationship is clearly intrusive, victimizing the speaker without their permission in a way that paints white Americans as saviors when the speaker believes they have no space to comment on their experiences in the first place. The speaker then powerfully refuses their statements of pity, saying:
“do not write me off an obituary // no one died // i am still // here //
celebrating”
These lines rewrite the victimization white Americans have imposed upon people like the speaker, while also inverting the language of death the speaker has become accustomed to using in terms of themself. It seems through these experiences with white America they have overcome the death narrative found throughout the rest of the collection, resisting the labels placed upon them by people outside of their culture and declaring themself alive.
Igusti’s writing style requires their reader to take their time reading and rereading each line, forcing us to keep discovering new meanings and truths with each consumption of their work. Igusti’s honesty and mastery of writing come together in a beautiful illustration of grief, joy, loss, and celebration, leaving their reader with a necessary, and sometimes jarring insight into the complicated and unique experiences of a Muslim, female, Indonesian, queer identity.
Igusti, Dena. Cut Woman. Game Over Books, 2020. https://www.gameoverbooks.com/product-page/cut-woman.
Darah Schillinger is a rising senior at St. Mary’s College of Maryland studying English Literature with a double minor in Creative Writing and Philosophy. She previously interned for the literary magazine EcoTheo Review in summer 2020 and has had poetry published in both her school literary journal, AVATAR, and in the Spillwords Press Haunted Holidays series for 2020. Darah currently lives in Perry Hall, Maryland with her parents and in her free time she likes to write poetry and paint.
Happy National Poetry Month!
*****
Yellow Arrow Publishing is a nonprofit supporting women writers through publication and access to the literary arts.
You can support us as we AWAKEN in a variety of ways: purchase one of our publications from the Yellow Arrow bookstore, join our newsletter, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel. Donations are appreciated via PayPal (staff@yellowarrowpublishing.com), Venmo (@yellowarrowpublishing), or US mail (PO Box 102, Glen Arm, MD 21057). More than anything, messages of support through any one of our channels are greatly appreciated.