The Stories of Devil-Girl

Devil-Girl is a storyteller smaller than a stain and larger than life, a mythic figure roaming the globe. Born into Brooklyn housing projects and the nightmares of her immigrant family, she becomes a runaway in the human marketplace of the streets of New York. Accompanied by her sense of outrage and sense of humor, ghosts of the ancestors and her prophetic vision, she moves from silence through rage into a deep alliance with the marginalized.

"Poignant and fierce, this book is moving, beautifully written, and urgently relevant."

"Devil-Girl's stories are all of our stories, all of the 'discarded and demonized', all of us who have had to fight to survive, to fight to tell our truths. Achtenberg's wise survivor, Devil-Girl, is witness and seer, and her words are sustenance. There is much pain in this book, much wisdom, and a kind of beauty that sears itself into memory, a fierce beauty that is as necessary as air. Read this book." -Lisa D. Chave, Author of Destruction Bay; In An Angry Season

"Achtenberg is a cutting-edge voice in the literature of the post-globalization age, an era in which we are uprooted geographically and spiritually, and redefining what it means to be home. What a superbly written book! Read it and be changed." -Demetria Martinez, Author of Mother Tongue

"Stunning and original! Powerful 'make it new' language that creates-through the runaway energy and precise detail of the storytelling voice-a disturbing world in all its particularities, only to transcend it by grappling with what's at stake in the larger world." -Stratis Haviaras, Founder and former editor of Harvard Review

"An amazing piece of bravura writing! Devil-Girl takes us from destitution to seedy glamour as a homeless vulnerable young woman tries to survive the savagery of the streets. Poignant and fierce, this book is moving, beautifully written, and urgently relevant." -Kathleen Spivack, Author, Director: Advanced Writing Workshop

Book #1 in the Reflections of America Series

Learn about the author at www.Anya-Achtenberg.com

Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com, an imprint of Loving Healing Press

Author: Anya Achtenberg
Publisher: Modern History Press
Published: 05/07/2008
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.38lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9781932690620


Review Citation(s):
Multicultural Review 12/01/2008 pg. 53

About the Author
Achtenberg, Anya: - Anya Achtenberg is an award‐winning fiction writer and poet. Her recently completed novel, More Than The Wind, was excerpted in Harvard Review. Her second book of poetry, The Stone of Language, was published in 2004 by West End Press. Her stories have received awards from Coppola's Zoetrope: All‐Story, New Letters, the Asheville Fiction Writers Workshop, the Raymond Carver Story Contest and others. She received a 2008 Minnesota State Arts Board Grant for work on History Artist, a novel‐in‐progress, centering on Devi Mau, a Cambodian woman born of anAfrican‐American father at the moment the bombing of Cambodia began. She is working on a book to turn her multi‐genre course, Writing for Social Change: Re‐Dream a Just World, into a moveable workshop. She has taught creative writing at universities and colleges, for writers' organizations, with drop‐out youth, working adults, and in the public schools. She teaches independent workshops throughout the country and online, on essential elements of story in fiction and memoir; deepening characterization; autobiography and autobiographical fiction; and writing for social change. She offers manuscript consultations in fiction, poetry, and memoir. Visit her website Writing Story / Finding Poetry / Freeing Voice: Swimming through the ocean of language at www.Anya-Achtenberg.com