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3 books match the query 'Basil, Priya'

cover of De-blading the Knife: Writing Femicide in Mud

De-blading the Knife

Writing Femicide in Mud

Cristina Rivera Garza

Diaphanes, 2026

Rooted in Mexican and indigenous practices, De-blading theKnife is Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza's profound meditation on the erasure of violence against women.
 
Inspired by a walrus-ivory Story Knife from the Arctic region, De-blading theKnife creates a multi-faceted narration that asks: what is remembered? How? For whom? The ephemeral strokes of a Story Knife were traditionally drawn by young Yupik girls into soil or snow to repeat old tales that would then fade away. Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza connects this empowering ancient Indigenous practice to the “violentometro,” a contemporary tool designed in Mexico to measure instances of intimate partner violence. The story of violence against women constantly disappears even as it is continuously told and re-told, but perhaps a Story Knife may play a role in reversing such erasure.
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cover of Locked In and Out

Locked In and Out

Priya Basil

Diaphanes, 2025

A reflection on the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace and its contradictory use as an ethnological museum.

Having recently accepted German citizenship, writer and activist Priya Basil explores the Humboldt Forum from a deeply personal perspective. She delves into the question of what such a building, such a project, means for an understanding of the past and for belonging in the present. This much disputed, contested, celebrated monument now exists—but what exactly does it monumentalize? Basil writes, “In German, the word Schloss means a palace, and also a lock. The central question: Can a lock also be a key?”
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cover of Suspended Waters

Suspended Waters

Eliana Hernandez-Pachon

Diaphanes, 2026

From the Colombia National Poetry Prize winner, Eliana Hernández-Pachón, comes a poetic essay that asks: what does it mean to possess, to preserve, to let go?

Suspended Waters is a poetic essay that connects four objects made of plant fibers: a death raft woven from reeds that has come ashore in the wrong place, a gold Muisca raft that evokes the legend of El Dorado, Amazonian flutes made of palm that can only be seen by men, and a sheet of paper used for museum records.

Exploring how these objects sustain different worlds through a text pulsing with the life of more-than-human beings and voices both solo and Choral, Colombian writer Eliana Hernández-Pachón evokes worlds of ritual, sanctity, and abundance. 

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