Winner of the 2023 American Book Award
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, Sherry Shenoda’s collection Mummy Eaters follows in the footsteps of an imagined ancestor, one of the daughters of the house of Akhenaten in the Eighteenth Dynasty, Egypt. Shenoda forges an imagined path through her ancestor’s mummification and journey to the afterlife. Parallel to this exploration run the implications of colonialism on her passage.
The mythology of the ancient Egyptians was oriented toward resurrection through the preservation of the human body in mummification. Shenoda juxtaposes this reverence for the human body as sacred matter and a pathway to eternal life with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European fascination with ingesting Egyptian human remains as medicine and using exhumed Egyptian mummies as paper, paint, and fertilizer. Today Egyptian human remains are displayed in museums. Much of Mummy Eaters is written as a call and response, in the Coptic tradition, between the imagined ancestor and the author as descendant.
Foreword by Kwame Dawes
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Sunflowers of Fukushima: Invocation
Part I
Ancestor Opening of the Mouth: A Daughter’s Long Wail
Aftermath: A Mother’s Long Wai
Mummification: Early Lessons
From Mummification to the Incarnation
Descendant Ponders the Rising Cost of Dying
Makeup
Race against Time I
Shabti, Ushabti: “Answerer”
Descendant Ponders Space
Ancestor Dreams of the River Nile by a Dark Gate
Kemet, Nile
Descendants, in Memory of Our Family Farm
Ancestor Makes a Negative Confession
Etymologies: God
Descendant Mourns Akhenaten: A Lesser Hymn to One God
Apophatic Confession
To Become One of the Blessed Dead
Part II
Question
Etymologies: Mummy
Mummy Eaters
Immigration: “King (Deceased)”
Living Mummies
A Dealer Sits
Flesh Trade
Descendants Discuss Motivation, Your Honor
Descendants Discuss Literary Merits of Mummy Eating
Thomas Pettigrew Mansplains Mummies
How to Silence I: British Lessons
How to Silence II: Roman Lessons
Stolen Hour
How to Silence III: Greek Lessons
Race against Time II
Mummy Brown
Supply and Demand
Part III
Race against Time III
Descendant Talks Suffering with Old Aunties
Descendant Opening of the Eyes: A Daughter’s Long Wail
Descendant Interrogated about Suffering and Ancestry
Descendant Addresses French Boy: Skin Politics
Descendants Offer Prayer
Etymologies: Book of the Dead
Cairo, 1958
Descendants Discuss Definitives
Descendant Names Modern Mummy Eaters
Numbers
How to Silence: Mathematics Edition
True Mirror
Ancestor Calms Descendant’s Fears about Having Children in a World without Kemet
El Asar
How to Silence IV: Arabic Lessons
Ou-ta: How to Speak from Silence
Final Test
Letters for My Grandmothers
Notes and References
