Naomi & The Reckoning by Christine Sloan Stoddard

Naomi & The Reckoning by Christine Sloan Stoddard

(2 customer reviews)

$14.99

 

Naomi & The Reckoning could rightfully be called a focused hybrid: focused in that it is, as Stoddard herself says, “for all the women who were tricked & shamed;” a hybrid in that it is a combination of five poems and a prose offering. The poetic centerpiece, both in terms of placement and proficiency, “The Almost Rape,” recalls sexual abuse by a relative with unvarnished honesty tempered by an almost-Vonnegut style of gallows humor, a tone maintained in “A Purity Ball Fashion Statement.” Anchoring all this is Stoddard’s short story “Naomi.” A newlywed more bothered by the scar of “the lips between her legs” than she is by the remains of surgery for a cleft lip, Naomi is a strange mix of sequestered naïveté and worldly wisdom. The difficulty is in calling any of these pieces—be they prose or poetry—fiction since the pieces all ring true.

–Bill Cushing (A Former Life, Finishing Line Press)

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Christine Sloan Stoddard‘s Naomi & The Reckoning is a tiny but fierce resistance. At once brutal and beautiful, this short collection captures the visceral echoes of pain thrust upon the female gender. Stoddard dives into the deep end of rape, trauma, religion, and relationship with a keen voice and potent message.
–Holly Lyn Walrath, author of Glimmerglass Girl“

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What Christine Sloan Stoddard does extremely well is write about the complexities of female shame – and Naomi & The Reckoning is no exception. Her work reminds us to take the pursuit of female pleasure seriously, as something worthy and brave.”

–Mari Pack, author of Description of a New World
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Description

Naomi & The Reckoning

by Christine Sloan Stoddard

$14.99, Novelette, paper

978-1-64662-227-6

2020

This novelette follows Naomi, a young woman with a physical deformity living in Richmond, VA. Struggling with body acceptance all her life, Naomi also comes from a strict religious upbringing. Purity culture further complicated her relationship with her body and, now recently married, she can’t find sexual satisfaction.

Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American author, artist, and the founder of Quail Bell Magazine. Her books include Desert Fox by the Sea (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), Belladonna Magic: Spells In The Form of Poetry And Photography (Shanti Arts), Water for the Cactus Woman (Spuyten Duyvil), and other titles.

2 reviews for Naomi & The Reckoning by Christine Sloan Stoddard

  1. David –

    A unique & touching story of shame but also personal victory

  2. Gretchen –

    A validating story of overcoming systematic shame.

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