In fierce, textured voices, the women of Ovid'sMetamorphosesclaim their stories and challenge the power of myth
I am the home of this story. After thousands of years of other peoples tellings, of all these different bridges, of words gotten wrong, Ill tell it myself.
Seductresses and she-monsters, nymphs and demi-goddesses, populate the famous myths of Ovid'sMetamorphoses. But what happens when the story of the chase comes in the voice of the woman fleeing her rape? When the beloved coolly returns the seducer's gaze? When tales of monstrous transfiguration are sung by those transformed? In voices both mythic and modern,Wake, Sirenrevisits each account of love, loss, rape, revenge, and change. It lays bare the violence that undergirds and lurks in the heart of Ovids narratives, stories that helped build and perpetuate the distorted portrayal of women across centuries of art and literature.
Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin, the acclaimed author ofHammer Head, recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men. She breathes new life into these fraught and well-loved myths.
Nina MacLaughlinis the author of the acclaimed memoir
Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter. Formerly an editor at
The Boston Phoenix, she is a books columnist for
The Boston Globeand has written for publications including
The Paris Review Daily,
The Believer, the
Los Angeles Review of Books,
The Wall Street Journal,
Bookslut,
The Daily Beast,
Cosmopolitan, and
The Huffington Post. She was also recognized in
Refinery29's list of 21 New Authors You Need to Know. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 atLit Hub
More than thirty women from OvidsMetamorlĂ9
![Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/3/7/1/2_4198974.jpg "Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung [Paperback]")