Aurora Levins Morales

This new collection of poetry and prose explores the body as a site of pleasure, pain and political struggle. Disabled and chronically ill writer, historian and activist Aurora Levins Morales writes about epilepsy and stroke, the social control of dark skinned women's sexuality and the erotics of chronic fatigue, epigenetics and healing justice, community based science and what it's like to get health care in Cuba. "Aurora's writing is itself a kind of alchemy, balancing emotional nuance with rich historical context, simultaneously speaking in an intimate, personal voice and for a collective we. She offers us vulnerable, power-filled lyricism that moves the audience to new understandings of their own lives, as she claims her body's pleasure and pain." Patty Berne, Co-founder and Artistic Director, Sins Invalid. "Medically, “kindling” refers to the way bodies can be sensitized by small, repeated exposures to chemicals or electric shocks. Aurora’s essays and poems about the human body’s responses to oppression describe both the kindling of disease and of consciousness, fragments of tinder that ignite into a blazing awareness of our bodies as sites of struggle and transformation." Casimira Fuentes O’Neill, M.D.