"A gorgeously searing meditation on womanhood and worship, violence and desire. Purmasir has a sharp yet loving eye for the innermost details of a pain as old as time. I needed this book, and can't wait to share it with my own mother. Should I ever have a daughter, it'll be required reading for her as well."

—Lyd Havens (she/they), author of Chokecherry

“Our Synonyms is a striking collection of poetry interrogating the mythology of womanhood. Dizzying, electric, and devastating. Yena Sharma Purmasir is an auto-buy for me. This book only cements that.”

—Trista Mateer (she/her), author of Aphrodite Made Me Do It

“‘You say at the beginning, as if a single thread can weave. The thread loves the needle. The needle wants the hand,’ writes Yena Sharma Purmasir. Our Synonyms: An Epic is a lush tapestry of feminine desire which has to situate itself within a divine maw of violence. In a rich menagerie of biblical figures and interludes, Purmasir's careful pen uses a series of Old Testament figures as vehicles for a fraught relationship between a mother and daughter, loss of faith, and threshold between woman and girlhood. Purmasir brings an elegant and passionate voice to the collection of voices found in this brilliant work."

—I. S. Jones (she/her), Editor-in-Chief of Frontier Poetry

“In Our Synonyms: An Epic, Yena Sharma Purmasir has traced a lineage of mothers and daughters to the root of their wounds and unearthed their voices, encouraging them to sing. Purmasir’s language is resonant and precise, full of interwoven concentric stories that bring you closer and closer to your own self. Both biblical and historical, present and past, Our Synonyms asks: what lives in the body, what do we give birth to, and when will it swallow us? It's a collection that I'll be returning to for years to come.”

—Caitlin Conlon (she/her), author of The Surrender Theory

“Our Synonyms does not accept political categorizations of violence as inevitable; rather, this book is committed to emotion in precise, human detail. This book’s chorus of speakers understand intimately what it is to be consumed, and bare their teeth in protest.”

—Gaia Rajan (she/her), author of KILLING IT

“Our Synonyms unearths a subaltern howl of righteous feminine anger. These poems crackle with themes of erasure and resurgence and light a fire to illuminate dancing constellations of myth, faith, maternal lineage, and history. The collection brings a pantheon of women, archetypal and transcendent, into focus— exploring dark, intimate corners of their stories and knitting them within a vast collective experience. I wept, I savored lines and stanzas, I exclaimed with recognition or, the feeling of being recognized, within these pages.”

—Emily Duffy (she/her), author of Hemorrhaging Want and Water