Cut Woman — Dena Igusti
Winner of the inaugural Perennial Press Chapbook Award! Cut Woman by Dena Igusti (2020)
In a post-colonial world shaped by what is and what will be lost, what is there left to celebrate? In Dena Igusti's debut collection Cut Woman, Igusti is overwhelmed by the loss of their people. The loss includes but is not limited to: the deaths of Muslims around the world due to xenophobia and Islamophobia; the deaths of Indonesians as a result of post-colonialism, state violence, environmental racism, and overall media negligence and prioritization of white people over their own; the mortality of friends, lovers, and family facing economic disparity and gentrification in New York City; the loss of their body that could've been their body if they didn't undergo female genital mutilation. They knows that one day, their time will be up too. Rather than stay in mourning, they tries to turn these wakes, both current and future, into the biggest celebrations of their life.
Dena Igusti is a queer Indonesian Muslim poet, playwright, and journalist based in Queens, New York. They are the co-founder of Asian multidisciplinary arts collective UNCOMMON;YOU and literary press Short Line Review. They are a 2018 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and 2017 Urban Word Federal Hall Fellow. They are a 2019 Player’s Theatre Resident Playwright for their co-written Off-Broadway production “Sharum.” They are a 2020 Ars Nova Emerging Leaders Fellow. Their work has been featured in BOAAT Press, Peregrine Journal, and several other publications. They have performed at The Brooklyn Museum, The Apollo Theater, the 2018 Teen Vogue Summit, and several universities across the nation. Their collection was published with Game Over Books in Summer 2020. You can find more of them at denaigusti.com. Socials: @dispatchdena on Instagram and Twitter.
