This morning, I ran across Cristina Peri Rossi’s State of Exile. Or rather, I learned of its existence, of her work, her experience as a woman without country… finding a way to live new. 
I happened on it through Ginsberg’s Kaddish as published by the wonderful City Lights Books, San Fran in handy pocket size. Rossi’s book is part of that pocket series. To take with you.
Exile. It’s the thrum and back beat of the novel I’m writing, the experience of my protagonist (Cyrus the Great’s aunt Amytis) and of her cultural context — Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. This is the moment, some 2500 years ago, when particular songs, traditions, and stories began to take shape in an organic and dynamic collection that would become the Bible.
Exile. Rossi writes, “If exile were not a terrible experience, it would be a literary genre. Or both things at the same time.” I’m not sure I get it, entirely. But I like it.
