The Problem with Having a Body

The Problem with Having a Body unites Jessica Popeski's preoccupations with intersectional ecofeminist poetics and the genetic inheritance of fractured, grandmaternal generational lines. It examines how political and geographical rupture, war zones, and genocide generate traumatic, ancestral memory by chronicling the speaker's experiences of moving through the world with physical dis/abilities and anorexia. These poems ask loud questions about why depression has decorated the medical notes of the author's family, manifesting as cyclical bouts of anxiety and depression, physical illness, voicelessness, and disordered eating. By granting these recurring intergenerational cadences value in the present, the collection seeks to transform a legacy of depression into greater consciousness.