{"product_id":"the-performance-of-becoming-human-by-daniel-borzutzky","title":"Borzutzky, Daniel: The Performance of Becoming Human","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Performance of Becoming Human \u003c\/em\u003eby Daniel Borzutzky (Brooklyn Arts Press, paperback)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: April 1, 2016\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing: \u003cspan\u003ePoetry. Latino\/Latina Studies. \u003c\/span\u003e2016 National Book Award Winner\u003cspan\u003e. Following in the path of his acclaimed collections THE BOOK OF INTERFERING BODIES (Nightboat, 2011) and IN THE MURMURS OF THE ROTTEN CARCASS ECONOMY (Nightboat, 2015), Daniel Borzutzky returns to confront the various ways nation-states and their bureaucracies absorb and destroy communities and economies. In THE PERFORMANCE OF BECOMING HUMAN, the bay of Valparaiso merges into the western shore of Lake Michigan, where Borzutzky continues his poetic investigation into the political and economic violence shared by Chicago and Chile, two places integral to his personal formation. To become human is to navigate borders, including the fuzzy borders of institutions, the economies of privatization, overdevelopment, and underdevelopment, under which humans endure state-sanctioned and systemic abuses in cities, villages, deserts. Borzutzky, whose writing Eileen Myles has described as \"violent, perverse, and tender\" in its portrayal of a \"kaleidoscopic journey of American horror and global horror,\" adds another chapter to a growing and important compendium of work that asks what it means to a be both a unitedstatesian and a globalized subject whose body is \"shared between the earth, the state, and the bank.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"Like any good satirist, Borzutzky considers his subjectivity with the same lens he applies to the systems he critiques, and THE PERFORMANCE OF BECOMING HUMAN is an apogee of that inquiry. Since THE BOOK OF INTERFERING BODIES, Daniel Borzutzky has been the fabulist we most need because he's unafraid to detail the truth of our oligarchy, without pedantry. In his figurative world our bodies are forced through privatized meat grinders, but funnily in the way that all dark horror stories trigger our gallows humor. I'm thrilled every time Borzutzky brings a book in the world, learn the most about reality from him.\"—Carmen Giménez Smith\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":31337282371607,"sku":"9781936767465","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/products\/content_8928035d-ce94-4e2f-b5d5-5ca501d3b610.jpg?v=1586746158","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/the-performance-of-becoming-human-by-daniel-borzutzky","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}