Why God Is a Woman

by Nin Andrews

Overview

Why God Is a Woman is a collection of poems written about a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex. It is also the story of a boy who, exiled from the island because he could not abide by its sexist laws, looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness and wonders: Why does God have to be a woman? Celebrated prose poet Nin Andrews creates a world both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women.

Nin Andrews's books include The Book of Orgasms and Sleeping with Houdini.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160622
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	05/18/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	542 KB

About the Author

Nin Andrews: Nin Andrews grew up on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her BA from Hamilton College, and her MFA from Vermont College. She is the author of numerous books, including Spontaneous Breasts, winner of the Pearl Chapbook Contest; Any Kind of Excuse, winner of the Kent State University chapbook contest; The Book of Orgasms; and the BOA title Sleeping with Houdini, named one of ten best poetry books of 2010 by the Monserrat Review. Her poems and stories appear widely in such places as Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Best American Poetry, Great American Prose Poems, and elsewhere. Married to Jim Andrews, a physicist and a university professor at Youngstown State University, she lives and writes in Poland, Ohio.

Table of Contents

On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
Julio Vega
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
The Token Man
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
The House Husbands
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island were I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
Depilation
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
After Angelina left me
After Angelina left me
Loss
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
My Secret
On the Island where I come from
My Angelina
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
The Woman with the Halo
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I come from
On the Island where I grew up
On the Island where I come from
Notes on the Man Lily
Why God Is a Woman

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2015
Andrews (Southern Comfort) offers a provocative collection of prose poems in which gender roles are swapped and women rule on a fantastical island. This is a place where the women look like Angelina Jolie, young boys play with Boberto dolls, men earn $0.70 for every dollar women make, and “the hardworking woman is forever in search of the ideal whip.” The lovelorn narrator, a man who has left the otherwise unnamed island, leads a multifaceted tour through his own memories and island culture. The tales all have titles that are variations of “On the Island Where I Come From,” echoing Joe Brainard’s “I Remember,” but with a tropical twist. In this alternate universe, men go through painful hair-removal procedures, intense to the point of becoming a kind of “spiritual practice, a preparation for sex and death”; they buy only the latest fashions, tattoo their penises, and work out incessantly. When men’s wings sprout in adolescence, they stanch the blood with pads, not unlike a strange kind of angelic and masculine menstruation. Women, in contrast, are aggressive catcallers, and they grope young boys, checking—a male narrator recalls from experience—to see if “my fruit was ripe.” Andrews comically upends gender expectations with surprisingly profound results. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of 2016 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry

"Rather than floating the idea down the central current of gender reversal, she forays into side channels, exploring ideas of religion and spirituality, love in the context of power imbalance, puberty and sexual innocence, colonialism, celebrity, empathy. Just when you feel the book has settled into a pattern or rhythm, a strange anomaly confronts you on the next page, a poem that does not carry the flag of the book’s theme but runs in a different direction, to a different wind."

—Fourth & Sycamore

"What amazes me about these prose poems is that they are never gimmicky. Truly, they are believable, painful anecdotes told to us by a male speaker on this Island. I found myself immediately feeling empathy for this speaker, finding some of the poems sad or funny or alarming. But Andrews also forces us to see that her Island is eerily familiar, and that our own notions of gender and identity are indeed sad, funny, alarming, and in desperate need of critique.”

—Huffington Post

“Set on a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex, the world celebrated prose poet Andrews creates is both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women.”

—Publishers Weekly



"Nin Andrews' Why God Is a Woman explores a female utopia in which Friedan's 'feminine mystique' would never have had to be contemplated. But on this island in which multiple orgasms, childbirth, and multitasking are prized and rewarded, what will happen to the men who 'are designed for domesticity,' spending countless hours 'preening in front of the bathroom mirror' dreaming of their wedding day, only to be stalked and harassed with predatory women trying 'to get into (their) trousers?' A revolutionary, Andrews writes a social satire that is magical, compassionate, and full of flight—with men and boys being judged by their 'wingspan.' Will God show true compassion? Andrews' Why God Is a Woman is a tour de force by one of America's leading poets."

—Denise Duhamel

"On the island in Why God Is a Woman not only does every woman look like Angelina Jolie, but they take her name as their own. Men are winged objects of beauty, and those with the widest span are the most sought after. This is a place—and a story—populated by personages like Dolly Delita, world-famous man-trainer, and Julio Vega, the beauty king who was also the first man to run for president. The rules of our world have been inverted within the mirror Nin Andrews holds up for us, and never have we looked more strange and fabulous."

—Christopher Barzak

"On the island where I grew up—Virginia in the 1960s—mothers told their daughters, 'it's a man's world.' Nin Andrews stands that world on its head, throwing its absurdities into sharp and witty relief. But her poems are for men as well as women, inviting us all to re-imagine love, desire, death, and visions of paradise."

—Anne-Marie Slaughter

From the Publisher