An Unruled Body

by Ani Gjika Narrated by Ani Gjika

Overview

In a searching and powerful debut memoir, award-winning poet and literary translator Ani Gjika tells a different kind of origin story by writing about the ways a woman listens to her own body, intuition, and desire.



Ani Gjika was born in Albania and came of age just after the fall of Communism, a time when everyone had a secret to keep and young women were afraid to walk down the street alone. When her family immigrates to America, Gjika finds herself far from the grandmother who helped raise her, grappling with a new language, and isolated from aging parents who are trying in their own ways to survive. When she meets a young man whose mind leans toward writing, as hers does, Ani falls in love-at least, she thinks it's love.



Set across Albania, Thailand, India, and the US, An Unruled Body is a young woman's journey to selfhood through the lenses of language, sexuality, and identity, and how she learns to find freedom of expression on her own terms.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

An Unruled Body paints a new portal of entry into the role of the nation in the multiple layers of our experiences with consent and sensuality. Ani Gjika makes us remember that these pages, and this memoir, are made for feeling our way through the chaos while making memories of pleasure and resistance.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

“An Unruled Body compellingly draws readers along Gjika’s journey toward sexual freedom, and the experience is breathtaking. At times meditative, and at times cinematic, Gjika writes about the intricacies of patriarchy, trauma, and sex with unflinching clarity and nuance, and an embodied sense of suspense that will keep your heart pounding.” —Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You

“Ani Gjika has written a searing reminder that history lives in the body and a love letter to the power of language to restore us to ourselves. Beautiful, impactful, and deeply moving, An Unruled Body resonates far beyond its pages.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

"Readers will be impressed by the author’s bold willingness to face the horrors of her childhood as she artfully blends an insightful look at her native country’s societal issues with her own family’s immigration story and her ongoing journey to sexual health. A poignant literary and personal achievement." — Booklist starred review

“The author’s poetic prowess is clearly reflected in this text’s lyrical, clean lines, as well as in her compassionate but critical analysis of every character of the story, including herself . . . . this is a gorgeously written look at a difficult topic.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Throughout An Unruled Body, language serves as rich soil from which to grow. It is, in part, a story of sexual awakening: Gjika narrates her marriage, her fears, her experience with a sex counselor, and her own experiments and explorations with her body. And more, it's about what it is to say instead of not, to put to words what is most difficult to express. ‘How do I construct a story out of silence?’ she asks. The book is an answer, and one that reminds us that vulnerability is one of the highest forms of strength. Gjika, with warmth, candor, poetry, passion, and poise, shows her growing fluency with the language the body speaks, and how to listen to what it says.” — Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe

“This lush, gorgeous, and sexy memoir is about desire hidden and finally claimed. As this brave, astonishingly talented writer and award-winning translator moves across far-flung countries and cultures, she also listens to the language of the entire world, making a home on the page—where she translates herself.” —Aviya Kushner, author of The Grammar of God

“An Albanian-born poet and translator, Ani Gjika has a voice that is precise, surprising, and wholly her own. Her writing made me think more deeply about how to live in the world and how to be more awake to sensations from without and from within. This book is a gift and a delight.” —Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland

"In this lyrical and intimate memoir, Ani Gjika reflects on her Albanian upbringing, her family’s immigration to the U.S. and her exploration of autonomy, identity, sexuality and selfhood. Bridging taboo and truth, patriarchy and power, this is a singular and powerful journey." — Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

“Gjika’s memoir is a reminder that translation—of trauma, the body, sex, and grief—is not always easy but vital.” — Kathryn Savage, World Literature Today

"A testament to the power of writing to cope with trauma and pain." — Eric Liebetrau, "5 Big Nonfiction Books From Small Presses," Kirkus Reviews

“Although this is a memoir, An Unruled Body almost reads like it's a part Proust novel, part Szymborska / Lleshanaku / Lorca poetry collection. Immersive, imagistic and attentive to the lived life in and out of the body. Gjika investigates what can and can't be contained (in the girl, in the woman, in memory, in language, in love, sex and heartbreak). In an inspired move, Gjika creates forms and sentences that are ambitious and complex, written in the poet's clean and intentionally understated prose. Ani Gjika proves that she is more than a translator and a poet, but a survivor, a listener, an emotional historian that is daring to live with her own history as fully as she can fathom.” —Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

“With a poet’s eye for detail, Ani Gjika invites her readers into the intricacies of a life, making us feel as if we are experiencing the story in real time alongside her. The voice in An Unruled Body is brave, raw and immediate. If prose is the vehicle that carries the narrative, poetry is the heart and soul that feeds the imagination in this memoir. From a writer who learned English by memorizing Emily Dickinson’s opening lines, comes a book that we will want to commit to memory and return to many times over.” —Eve Joseph, author of In the Slender Margin

“With tiny verses of poetry springing into the story like budding bouquets, An Unruled Body is a memoir about language, love, and the echo of generations that’s both uncommonly intimate and boldly kaleidoscopic. Gjika unpacks the thorny riddle of living in a body with such care and precision, yet still shows her reader a vast, teeming, and achingly beautiful world. What a thrill to read.” —Mike Scalise, author of The Brand New Catastrophe

“With a poet’s ear for sound and magic and rhythm, and a page-turning storytellers’ sense of narrative, Ani Gjika’s An Unruled Body is a hypnotic and ruthlessly honest account of navigating the enduring complexities of sexuality, gender, religion, and identity. This is a book the entire human race should read.” —Matthew Vollmer, author of All of Us Together in the End

“An Unruled Body, a poet's memoir, takes us travelling between Albania before and after the fall of communism, through languages, loves, betrayals and transgressions to Thailand, India, the U.S., and a new consciousness of the body’s deep wisdom.” —Jessica Moore, author of The Whole Singing Ocean

“In her courageous and profoundly moving memoir, Albanian-born poet and translator Ani Gjika reconstructs her personal history in Albania, America, and beyond, naming traumas that often remain unspoken. Gjika is unafraid to delve into the most taboo topic for a woman raised in a religious family within a patriarchal society: sex. The book that emerges is memorable, rich, and daring, simultaneously a portrait of Albania during the fall of communism; an exploration of language, desire, and power; and a bracingly honest sexual coming of age tale that unfolds across continents. An Unruled Body is a different kind of immigrant story, one that demands that we consider the specific, insidious ways that patriarchy controls a woman’s relationship to her body, mind, and expression. With a poet’s ear, Gjika finds language for confronting misogyny and the male gaze on the most intimate terms, ultimately revealing the transformational power of self-discovery through the written word.” —Prize Judges Francisco Cantú, Shuchi Saraswat, and Ilan Stavans

Kirkus Reviews

2023-08-31
An Albanian American poet retraces the complex path to her sexual awakening.

When she was 12, writes Gjika, she was raped on her way to school in Albania, where she grew up. As she recounts, it took two decades to talk to anyone about the trauma, during which time she married an Indian man named Ishan, who she met in an online poetry class. During their six-year marriage, the two never had sex, mostly because each time they tried, Gjika’s body shut down with fear and pain. The author began to see a sex counselor named Jean, who, the author writes, “will become someone who teaches me to listen to language. I see her as a translator, a fellow linguistic traveler. She engages in deep listening the way I do when I translate poetry.” The language Gjika hoped to learn was that of her own body. Under Jean’s guidance, the author was able to face the toxic elements of her marriage that, she realized, stymied her attempts at intense physical intimacy. In the process of healing, she had a romantic flirtation with a high school crush and a more serious relationship with a man who had two grown children. Each experience led Gjika closer and closer to facing her trauma—and to her ultimate, triumphant decision to remain a single, fulfilled woman. The author’s poetic prowess is clearly reflected in this text’s lyrical, clean lines, as well as in her compassionate but critical analysis of every character of the story, including herself. Toward the end, the text meanders, lacking the tightly edited, perfect pacing of the first two-thirds. Overall, though, this is a gorgeously written look at a difficult topic. The book won the 2021 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

A soulful, insightful memoir about an Albanian immigrant’s quest to learn her body’s language.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192059685
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/05/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged