Nothing Personal by Marina Blitshteyn

PUBLICATION DATE: April 2015
ISBN: 978-1-934819-52-4
Cover art by Jennifer Custard-Jarosz

"Blitshteyn's daily experience of womanhood, no less feminist, is equally powerful, poignant, satirical, and funny. Trapped with no way out from masculine inspection and rules as she pursues her academic and literary career, she struggles even more with her heritage as a girl raised by parents with acculturated gender expectations. She is influenced by her mother's domesticity and by her father's wish for women to be just that way. How do we grow past our parents' wishes into the ideals we, in our own era, wish for ourselves, especially if we are in the vanguard of our times?"
-Ann Starr, STARR REVIEW

"Here in my hands, in my purse, on my nightstand: a tidy and tight, bleeding and beautiful, remorseless and remorseful mouth bleeding flowers and chewing up those shell-like cis-male egos. [...] Nothing Personal calls out the men of our literary world who pretend (sincerely believe?) they’re different, enlightened even. I read at least half of these poems out loud, in delight and awe, to my husband—a man himself, but one who told me just last night he doesn’t hang out with many men because most of them are full of [long expletive-laden string of disgust adjectives] bullshit."
-Sarah Beddow, HYACINTH GIRL REVIEW