Why God Is a Woman

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 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