“The Great and Mighty Body of Writing”: On the Writing Body in Sami Berdugo’s All Five of Us
Abstract
This essay examines Sami Berdugo’s novel All Five of Us through the lens of the ‘writing body’. The concept integrates narrative poetics with corporeal practices. Drawing on previous scholarship on Berdugo’s engagement with Mizrahi identity, language, and embodiment, I argue that his writing body emerges as a charged site of trauma, secrecy, pleasure, and creative power. The novel’s fractured structure mirrors bodily ruptures while transforming them into a mode of literary agency and resistance.
Submitted: April 1, 2025 | Accepted: Oct. 19, 2025 | Published Dec. 15, 2025 | Language: en
Keywords Corporeality • Sami Berdugo • Trauma • Writing body • Mizrahi literature • Gender • Body • Narrative poetics • Language
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