My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova (tr. Lisa C. Hayden)

The narrator of My Dreadful Body (a version of Egana Djabbarova herself) grows up in an Azerbaijani family in Russia. In chapters structured around different parts of the body, she describes what is expected of a woman in her family. Mouths are for tasting food or singing children to sleep, not for speaking one’s mind. Legs are not to be displayed. Eyebrows are only to be plucked when the woman is married. Egana’s relationship with tradition is complicated by several factors, including that she is living between two cultures. As she puts it (in Lisa C. Hayden’s translation from the Russian): “I was Russian in the big world of school or in the yard, but I was Azerbaijani in the small world of family.” Colonialism has also left its mark, for example in the beauty standard of blue eyes being considered more beautiful than brown. There are no blue eyes in Egana’s bloodline, and the only way there could have been is through historical violence – nevertheless, the standard remains. Egana…