Rooted in a Jewish family history that reaches into 19th-century Ottoman Palestine,
Self-Portrait as Ruth
is written in defiance of all official versions of Israeli or Palestinian history. A challenging, aching, honest exploration of culpability, this lament will incite controversy and debate. These poems are interrogations of the first-person possessive—of claims, both singular and plural, to land, to identity, to history, and to the body—and of wounds and victimization, both unique and collective.