15 pages • 30 minutes read
Bag of Bones
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Background
Authorial Context
As someone with direct personal experience of both war and living under dictatorship, Dunya Mikhail knows personally the human costs of violence. Dunya Mikhail fled Iraq in 1995 after facing censorship of her writing, as her profile as a journalist and writer made her a target of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Although she has since built a successful life for herself in the United States and is now an American citizen, Mikhail’s poetry still frequently draws inspiration from her former life in Iraq. The 2005 poetry collection from which “Bag of Bones” is taken—The War Works Hard —features poems documenting war and dictatorship from multiple angles. Since Mikhail has been unable to return to Iraq since her escape, her poetry remains one of the only ways she can command attention to the suffering she personally witnessed and the ongoing tragedies in her homeland.
Socio-Historical Context
“Bag of Bones” is about the atrocities of a dictatorship. Its inspiration can be traced to Dunya Mikhail’s own direct personal experiences under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the former dictator of Iraq. As mentioned above, Mikhail was ultimately forced to flee Iraq to escape from Hussein’s government, and has never returned since to her homeland.
The modern history of Iraq is tragic and marked by frequent periods of violence and oppression.
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