Sext of Sauda/de

"Bespawl me in my agnestis!" (Cover me with your saliva in that part of my back which I cannot scratch) Fawzia Afzal-Khan takes on Annie Lanzillotto in vocal feats, electric shocks, precision, full teats. "Then without warning, it is the muezzin's voice that is following me into my dreams, wake up in the name of Allah it screams, and I am sadly grateful to it and to my body's need to empty..."

The Sext of Saudad/e is a sexed text-in-progress exploring gendered sexualities in the marketplace transactions of our times (“sauda” is a market exchange in Urdu, and saudade is the Portuguese word for longing)--as they affect women from the West and the East, the world of Judeo-Christianity and of Islam, filtered thru the madwoman vision of Pakistani-American academic-cum-actor-cum-singer-cum memoirist-cum-poet-cum-wifemotherlover Fawzia Afzal-Khan and her match in madness, Italian-American woman-loving performance artist and writer Annie Lanzilloto.

Fawzia Afzal-Khan, a scholar, poet, playwright, and singer trained in the North Indian classical tradition, was born and educated in Pakistan. She came to the United States for graduate school and is professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey.