Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

In fierce, textured voices, the women of Ovids Metamorphoses claim their stories and challenge the power of mythI am the home of this story. After thousands of years of other peoples tellings, of all these different bridges, of words gotten wrong, Ill tell it myself.Seductresses and shemonsters, nymphs and demigoddesses, populate the famous myths of Ovids Metamorphoses. But what happens when the story of the chase comes in the voice of the woman fleeing her rape? When the beloved coolly returns the seducers gaze? When tales of monstrous transfiguration are sung by those transformed? In voices both mythic and modern, Wake, Siren revisits each account of love, loss, rape, revenge, and change. It lays bare the violence that undergirds and lurks in the heart of Ovids narratives, stories that helped build and perpetuate the distorted portrayal of women across centuries of art and literature.Drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry and alt rock, of everyday speech and folk song, of fireside whisperings and therapy sessions, Nina MacLaughlin, the acclaimed author of Hammer Head, recovers what is lost when the stories of women are told and translated by men. She breathes new life into these fraught and wellloved myths.