Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)

McKie, Jane

 JOURNAL OF THE MOTHERHOOD INITIATIVE       259 
Baba Yaga in the Grand Canyon
JANE MCKIE
The Cariboo Road 
They keep coming, the empty-handed, with just one more shrew-sized 
question, its answer unravelling another year of Baba Yaga’s life.
They leave their hunger on the snow of her skin—a bluer vein, year of lines 
advancing on her centre.
She is a wise woman. Surely she can boil up another brew of roses 
to sift like lilac cabbages 
in the hot swill of her samovar? Her own medicine. The answer is clear. 
Leave this place. Don’t grieve forever.
  *
From New Westminster to Yale,
from Yale to Quesnel:
after Alaska, this is a rush of gold,
a skein of wheel-ruts and waterways,
trail of melded nights and days
that never once feels wearisome.
Her palms itch with preludes.
JANE MCKIE
260       VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2
Baba Yaga Confesses to the Colorado River
Stifled in her size zero fleece, hidebound 
by magic, Baba Yaga goat-steps 
the theatre of umbers 
down to the distant basin.  
After kicking off her walking boots,  
she stands where the Colorado River is shallow, 
candle-flamed by brack and flicker, 
thinking back until she cannot bear to think. 
  *
The river whispers: 
Swap your birch for Chihuahua pines. 
Look, here are trees with fat buttery berries, 
a berry-red sun roasts the Grand Canyon’s skull.  
Grandmother, forget your cupboard love 
of captured children, give up your keyhole 
of icicle teeth, the bone staves 
encircling your chicken-legged hut. 
Stop under these generous cliffs,  
let them eat you with their light.
She says: I have grown up. 
I have grown old.  
She says: I have nurtured. 
I have murdered.  
FOLIO
 JOURNAL OF THE MOTHERHOOD INITIATIVE       261 
The river says: Let go of the orphan stones in your pocket.
Unlace your spine. Follow me. Where I go 
there are no contradictions.  
The Compassionate Thief
Pink pebbles at the river’s bottom 
give Baba Yaga as much pleasure  
as children stolen from their beds.  
She sieves them, non-committal 
prospector, tips them back in. 
Sieves them, tips them back in. 
  *
A late summer storm approaches. 
She welcomes the cast of the sky 
as it shifts again, thunderclouds
scaled in CinemaScope. 
Secreted between shelves 
of rock and more rock, blue lupine  
and Indian paintbrush. Wild turkeys. 
Tarantulas on the high flats.   
All the horizontals make her dizzy. 
When summer lightning hits,  
her feet run from the river’s forgiveness, 
propelled by spidery rhythms.
JANE MCKIE
262       VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2
The Motherless Province 
A hundred questions wake in the witch, 
jump from trees to hector in a Slavic tongue 
she can no longer make any sense of. 
She shifts her tatters of sleep fitfully, 
tries to believe in the soft motel bed.
  *
 
Come, wake up the children.
A wolf hangs his head, digs in the compact
snow for frozen crumbs of blood. Another 
has his neck in a yoke, ready to serve,
but there is no mistress, no alpha beast
to measure himself against. Trees are milk
on one side, coal on the other. The moon,
on the cusp, holds up the old world order,
presides over a stopgap parliament.
Between the trees, a chaos of boulders
are flint-faced crouching men. The empty-ones 
gather, wait with the rocks for their mother.
When the moon sets, she will surely return.
FOLIO
 JOURNAL OF THE MOTHERHOOD INITIATIVE       263 
Baba Yaga, The Bone Leg
The squat box from America
is an enigma: 
no windows, no doors,
raised up on four fowl feet.
No foraging animal 
can get a snout in.
When they lift the roof—
an apparition of ashes
so aghast
the snow-blind sky blinks.
  *
There has to be one
to stand sentry,
to be a signpost,
to be a lamp
when there are no more enemies,
no more miles,
no more sights.
Just one sentinel. Char-white.
A kind of finishing line. 


English

Baba Yaga in the Grand Canyon

 ,  

Contributor Notes

Douglas, Patricia N.

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             245 
Boundaries of Touch:
Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy
Jean O’Malley Halley. 
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Reviewed by Patricia N. Douglas
Jean O’Malley Halley’s Boundaries of Touch is a courageous historical ac-
count of one of the most controversial issues of twentieth century United 
States—adult-child touch. Informed by scholars like feminist Susan Bordo 
and Michel Foucault, the author traces the key historical tension between 
“behaviourist” and “naturalist” perspectives on mother touch, outlining the 
paradoxical and intimate ways science is implicated in the making of nations 
and gendered selves. A self-proclaimed feminist, child sexual abuse survivor, 
and “attachment” (naturalist) parent, O’Malley Halley engages the reader 
in a page-turner made robust with an array of sources. She draws not only 
from scholarly and historical resources, but also from interviews completed 
with mothers aged twenty-eight to seventy-three, as well as a large sample of 
twentieth century self-help parenting books. O’Malley Halley issues a central 
challenge to the “to touch or not to touch” debate: adult-child touch is both 
potentially dangerous and vitally necessary.
O’Malley Halley introduces the reader to the debate about touch through 
an historical account of the rise of the scientific “expert.” By mid-century, 
this key shift usurps traditional feminine knowledge, naturalizes the male/
female, public/private divide, and justifies the ascendancy of a deeply patri-
archal capitalist consumerism that continues to rely on the unpaid labour 
of women. Next she takes the reader through fascinating case studies of 
breastfeeding, sleeping with baby, child sexual abuse, and pleasurable adult-
child touch. Through such intimate sites, advocates and “experts” of both 
behaviourist and naturalist perspectives appeal to science to shore up the 
“good” mother as white, hetero-normative, and middle-class. “Bad” moth-
ers who fall outside this norm (black, lesbian, single, poor, disabled, etc.) 
become a threat to the moral order and health of the nation. They must 
be reformed and brought into the middle-class project of scientific moth-
ering, variously defined by “experts” as rational (behaviourist) or intuitive 
(naturalist). O’Malley Halley concludes with a brief exploration of deeper 
questions: How might this study help change women’s lives? What does the 
debate around touch reveal about subjectivity, power, and what it means to 
be human?
book reviews
246             volume 4,  number 1
If anything, O’Malley Halley leaves the reader wanting more. Tantaliz-
ing tidbits from her interviews beg for more exposure as powerful teachers 
about the painful contradictions in mother’s lives. Second, direct engagement 
with Bordo and Foucault is all but absent from the author’s extensive case 
studies of adult-child touch. This leaves the reader wondering about their 
explicit connection outside of O’Malley Halley’s use of “ideology,” a term 
Foucault himself did not use as it implies that somewhere outside of ideol-
ogy lies “truth.” Further, while O’Malley Halley brilliantly exposes how the 
seemingly mundane choices mothers make are replete with complex histories 
and lived realities, it is only in her conclusion that she touches on the large 
questions cited above. 
O’Malley Halley advocates mothering as a contingent and uncertain ven-
ture, one that involves complicated histories of power and difference and dif-
ficult choices that disrupt any truth or certainty about being human offered 
through the clarity of science. Boundaries of Touch gives mothers, activists, and 
scholars a stunning and thoroughly researched must-read that contributes to 
key political questions of the day around power/knowledge, embodiment, and 
the social control of mothering. 
Urgent Message for Mother: 
Gather the Women, Save the World
Jean Shinoda Bolen. 
San Francisco: Conari Press, 2005.
Reviewed by Louise Gonsalvez
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a sparrow asked of a wild dove. “Nothing 
more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case I must tell you a story, the sparrow said. “I sat on the branch of 
a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow. Since I did not have anything 
better to do, I counted the snowflakes on the twigs and needles of my branch. 
Their number was 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd snowflake dropped 
onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say, the branch broke 
off.” Having said that, the sparrow flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about 
the story for a while, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one 
person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.” (Bolen 142)


Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy

Bernard, Wanda Thomas

Bonner, Claudine

Kinship and Community Care in African Nova Scotian Communities

Satterfield, Jane

212       volume 4, number 1
Editor’s Notes
It’s a great pleasure to feature new poems by Judith Baumel in this issue of 
Folio. Poet, critic, and translator Judith Baumel is Professor of English at 
Adelphi University and lectures on contemporary American poetry at Oxford 
University.  A former director of the Poetry Society of America, her work has 
been published in Poetry, The Yale Review, Agni Review, The New York Times, 
and The New Yorker. Baumel is the author of three poetry collections: The 
Kangaroo Girl (2011), Now (1996), and The Weight of Numbers (1988), winner 
of the Academy of American Poet’s prestigious Walt Whitman Award for first 
collections. Baumel is also the recipient of awards from The New York Foun-
dation for the Arts, and Bronx Recognizes Its Own, as well as fellowships for 
residencies at Yaddo, Saltonstall, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
To read a poem by Judith Baumel is to tumble headlong into a world of 
capacious thought that brings rich rewards. Her signature style weds the 
meditative sweep of the classical essay to a rich, highly dimensional lyricism 
Since her first publication, critics have consistently praised Baumel’s “bravura 
intelligence.” 
At the same time, Baumel’s work is admired for its accessibility and wit, as 
well as its deep grounding in places and people.  Her belief in poetry as doc-
ument and tribute is unswerving and no doubt accounts for its appearance in 
numerous literary anthologies, including Telling and Remembering: A Century 
of Jewish American Poetry; Gondola Signore Gondola: Poems on Venice; and Poems 
of New York. Writing about Baumel’s most recent collection, The Kangaroo Girl, 
poet Gail Mazur credits the poet’s wide-ranging curiosity, noting that she “is 
interested in everything historical, from the medieval persecution of the Jews 
to the toys of technology, to the stories of our bodies.” 
folio
 journal of the motherhood initiative       213 
In this new poetic sequence, Baumel explores life as a “brutal business,” 
one that is no less worthy of a “song of heavenly glittering.” Drawing on 
the visual tradition of the still life, this poet uses closely observed details to 
capture the beauty of the quotidian, creating a domestic space with a richly 
shadowed awareness of time. Equally compelling is Baumel’s technical facility 
in widening the range of her canvas so that the many surprising intersections 
between private and public life, between the contemporary and the historical, 
are brought into view. In “Open Arms,” for instance, we meet a mother who 
seeks consolation in the act of remembering those who have passed from this 
world, and imagines “assembling them like a doll party.”  
As the poem proceeds, single instances incite a host of memories so that 
the speaker’s multiple identities—mother, daughter, wife, and artist—refract 
the passage of time and the rich pageant of multi-generational history. This 
inheritance sparks in the speaker an impassioned, seemingly paradoxical desire 
to “grab everything and go”—a wish also inspiring the poet’s oath to “do better 
than Odysseus grabbing three times the shades.” 
Baumel is fascinated by the limits of love and language, a theme that 
emerges in “Another Young Person’s Suicide,” where the speaker reflects 
on a loss that “retuned” her life, “Made me dry soil so I absorb /Every drop 
thirstily. Made me wet soil the rain/Spills over wastefully, past my roots. 
Dark Soil./Top soil. Poor soil.” Elsewhere, the ornamental art in public space 
becomes something more than visual backdrop. Turning her attention to the 
monumental sculptures of Augustus St. Gaudens, in whose work the literal 
and metaphorical problems of perspective are eminently visible, the poet 
observes a disquieting historical truth: 
Victory’s vacant stare
would surely confirm the good
commercial outcome of the war
and how far they came from hooded grief.
    “Nike and Clover: A Study in Perspective”
 
In another poem, “Class Roster As Sicilian Atlas Index, ps 97, Mace Ave-
nue, The Bronx, 1964: A Reverse Ovidian Meditation,” Baumel approaches 
human fallibility and history’s transformations with bemused wit. A roster 
of Sicilian surnames “changed from earthly town to American children” is 
but one of Jupiter and Juno’s “concessions to the fleeting urges of the other 
gods, to their own dim-minded mistakes.”  Like the Roman poetic forebear, 
Baumel celebrates the surprising effects of mutability. “Locations” become 
“locutions”—vivid traces of fortune’s shifting tides. 
214       volume 4, number 1
With open arms, this poet embraces the knifing cold weather of adult 
life, where grief and beauty co-exist and healing comfort is found in scenes 
large and small: there’s the pleasure of a shared meal of home-made pasta on 
Sunday evenings that is undercut by an older relative’s revelation of enduring 
pain; there’s catching cheer in the “sure perfume” of lilacs and “the generous 
rot they toss into the air after a few days in the house”  (“American Lilacs”). 
The poet’s memories of these real flowers, grown so fluently in “the strip of 
my childhood ground,” by the poet’s father take on resonance in the literary 
kinship they share with “the lilacs of Walt Whitman,/the lilacs of Adrienne 
Rich, the Syringa of John Ashbery,” and yet are “better and more to me,” 
presaging as they do “adult failure.” 
As elegiac as they are celebratory, Baumel’s poems span present and past, 
popular and literary culture, rendering for her readers a world of wit and wonder. 
—Jane Satterfield
editor’s note


Editor’s Notes

Williams, Kate

book reviews
172             volume 4,  number 2
South Asian Mothering: Negotiating Culture, Family and Selfhood offers rare 
insight into the experience of South Asian mothers. It should be requisite 
reading for all mothers, psychologists, activists, academics, sociologists, policy 
makers, and health professionals.
Mommyblogs and the Changing Face of Motherhood
May Friedman.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
reviewed by kate williams
In Mommyblogs and the Changing Face of Motherhood, author May Friedman 
takes a poststructural theoretical approach to the digital phenomenon of 
mommyblogs. She relies on the three key terms of hybrid, cyborg, and queer 
to explore the voices of mommyblogs and to “help elucidate more fully the 
complexities of agency, power, identity, and subjectivity of motherhood” (22). 
Friedman contends that mommyblogs should be read as “innovative forms 
of maternal life writing that, taken collectively, begin to shift understandings 
of maternal subjectivity by presenting a public and multitudinous account of 
many mothers’ practices” (27).
The first two chapters, “Introduction” and “A Short History of the Ma-
masphere and the Discursive Construction of Motherhood,” offer historical 
and background information about mommyblogs and place mommyblogs 
within the canon of motherhood theory. In her introduction, Friedman 
grounds the genre of the mommyblog in earlier motherhood theory, citing 
Adrienne Rich’s and Alice Walker’s texts that argue for the significance of 
reading mothers’ stories. Friedman also engages with Judith Butler’s discus-
sion of performance when she writes about the authenticity of mommyblogs 
and argues that “[i]n following Butler’s notions of performativity, I consider 
‘women’ and ‘mothers’ as constructed rather than biologically created, and as 
unstable, incoherent subjects” (21). Chapter two offers an historical perspec-
tive on the development of blogs and mommyblogs. Here, Friedman tells 
readers how she selected the blogs under consideration in this book and her 
methodology for reading and analyzing her chosen blogs.
Chapters three to five focus on the three theoretical terms previously men-
tioned: hybrid, cyborg, and queer. In Chapter three, “On Hybridity: The 
Diversity and Multiplicity of the Mamasphere,” Friedman is less interest-
book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             173 
ed in the stereotypical middle-class white women writing blogs and more 
concerned with the non-mainstream bloggers, from the Gaza mother, to the 
young, unmarried black mother, to “the dominatrix next door” (55). This 
chapter explores the “complex relationship” between the identifying marker 
of “mother” and any other marker in regard to race, ethnicity, sexuality, gen-
der, nationality, occupation, etc. Friedman acknowledges that mommyblogs 
do not give rise to fixed identities, that “[t]he hallmark of the mamasphere is 
instability” (74). This instability, though, is what makes the mamasphere so 
interesting as a study. Friedman further writes, “To understand mothers that 
instability must be embraced” (74).
Chapter four, “On the Cyborg: Dialogism and Collective Stories,” relies 
on Donna Haraway’s theory of the cyborg to argue that the “collective ma-
ternal subject” created by the intersection of technology and human writers 
“is fundamentally cyborg” (76). Friedman reads the cyborg mother through 
three distinct characteristics of rationality, temporality, and collectivity, which 
are all concerned with the connection, and disconnect, between the mothers 
writing blogs and the audience reading them. 
Chapter five, “On Queer: A Liminal and Unfixed Motherhood,” argues 
that mommyblogs expose the queer side of motherhood as an institution. 
Friedman defines the word queer politically and opens the chapter with a 
brief history of Queer Theory. She emphasizes that “[u]nlike other reclaimed 
identity markers, queer, defined as odd or unusual, is notable for its lack of de-
scription. Someone who is queer is someone who is outside the norm, rather 
than a person who is described in his or her own right” (113). This distinction 
between queer as synonymous with homosexual and queer as “outside the 
norm” is fundamental to understanding Friedman’s argument that mother-
hood should be understood as queer. Mommyblogs queer motherhood by ex-
posing non-normative parenting styles and issues. Like the subjects of queer 
theory, the subjects of mommyblogs are destabilized.
Chapter six, titled simply “Conclusion,” brings together the three concepts 
of hybrid, cyborg, and queer to argue that “Mommyblogging can thus be 
seen as more than simply a new tool or a new genre—it is a different way of 
conceiving of the self ” (147). Friedman also uses this chapter to introduce a 
few new concepts, such as the monetization of mommyblogs and the growing 
popularity of social media sites like Facebook. Ultimately, Friedman argues 
that mommyblogs should be read not only because they are insightful and 
entertaining to readers, but because they present a new and immediate way 
for women to write and re-write what it means to be a mother through the 
poststructuralist ideas of hybrid, cyborg, and queer. 


Mommyblogs and the Changing Face of Motherhood

Rohde, Christine M.

book reviews
186             volume 4,  number 2
ily for several generations. Using a wooden funnel, she forces the 
girl to absorb large amounts of fresh cow’s milk, diluted with some 
plain water. She also makes the girl swallow handfuls of pounded 
raw millet (tedda). The Tuareg refer to this custom, as well as to 
the practice of fattening, as “filling” (adanay). In the beginning, the 
young girl is force-fed until she gets used to it and starts to partici-
pate routinely by lying down on her back and pulling her lips wide 
open. If she resists, the woman should not hesitate to pinch her 
or pull back her fingers, sometimes even until they break. (Saskia 
Walentowitz 76-77)
Randall and Walentowitz offer distinct, contrary readings of Tuareg wom-
en’s power. For Randall, the forced immobility of Tuareg women—an immo-
bility that is meant to aid them in maintaining their size—confines them; for 
Walentowitz, however, this same immobility ensures these women’s centrality 
to Tuareg social life.
This collection of essays offers studies on a wide array of countries: Austra-
lia, Central Niger, Ghana, India, Ireland, Northern Mali, the United King-
dom, and Tanzania. From these essays one learns that in Tanzania, “when a 
woman is pregnant, the people around her must pay no attention to her state 
and, as for herself, the future mother must protect her pregnancy from bad and 
envious looks, she must not even talk about it” (Mara Mabilia 103). In ironic 
contrast, the success of the McDonald’s chain of restaurants in India is due, 
in part, to the belief that food which “is both expensive and American … is 
perceived as healthy and good for children” (Devi Sridhar 184).
While fascinating discussions, these essays do not explicitly address women’s 
fatness and women’s maternal bodies. Rather, they discretely address women’s 
fatness or maternal bodies or potential obesity in women and children.
Bound by Love: 
Familial Bonding in Film and Television Since 1950
Laura Mattoon D’Amore, ed. 
United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.
reviewed by christine m. rohde
In Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television Since 1950, edi-
tor Laura Mattoon D’Amore playfully dissects the representation of famil-
book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             187 
ial bonds and gender roles in film and television. The book comprises three 
sections. The first section, “Learning Bonds of Love and Nature,” examines 
domestic representations of love and marriage in Cold War educational films; 
the influence of the superhuman Wonder Woman on motherhood; the ma-
ternal characterization of flight attendants in films; and the portrayal of teen 
motherhood in popular culture.
The second section, “Troublesome Bonds between Mothers and Children,” 
focuses on challenging relationships between mothers and children. Here, 
film and television reflect cultural anxiety about women’s changing roles in 
society and the work place. A destructive parent-child relationship is reflected 
in the media, as if to warn mothers against securing work outside the home. 
In one chapter, Sarah Arnold examines the differences between the original 
Japanese horror film, Ringu, and its American remake, The Ring. Although 
both films use a similar narrative structure, Arnold probes the differing cul-
tural representations and expectations of motherhood. Another chapter offers 
a historical overview of the representation of Walter and Lena, the “dueling 
protagonists” of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun.
The final section of the book, “Deconstructing Family Bonds for the 
Twenty-First Century,” explores the friction that develops when families 
face conflict. Mattoon D’Amore herself, for example, studies the depiction of 
multi-tasking mothers as superwomen in Heroes, The Incredibles, More of Me, 
and Nurse Jackie. Later chapters examine the traditional definition of the fam-
ily. The television show Supernatural, for example, redefines the traditional 
nuclear family as a relationship between two brothers. The role of fatherhood 
is looked at in the absence of a mother in the television show Everwood. In 
both instances, the loss of the mother figure forces changes in traditional 
masculine attributes. Lastly, Parenthood represents the “new normal family” 
on television. The series demonstrates a shift in contemporary family dynam-
ics, focusing on support and adaptation over tradition.
The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
Ann Douglas. 
Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2012.
reviewed by brittany irvine
Ann Douglas’s second edition of The Mother of All Pregnancy Books provides 
a thorough and comprehensive overview of preconception care, pregnancy, 


Bound by Love: Familial Bonding in Film and Television Since 1950

Unrau, Melanie Dennis

Play, Battling: Representing Resistant Mothers with “Mothers Who Refuse to Choose”

Smith Silva, Dorsía

book reviews
 journal of the motherhood initiative             191 
unsentimental view of mother-daughter relationships that lays bare the many 
ways that the narrowly confined and prescribed lives of women can come to 
poison, stunt, and undermine the very relationship that might be a source 
of power, strength, and resistance. Limned here is the complex interplay be-
tween individual aspirations and patriarchally defined possibilities for wom-
en. But there is also the strength and love of women, “the love that binds all 
these pages together.”
Mothers, Daughters and Untamed Dragons is both provoking and riveting. 
I empathized with Anna as she negotiated a tradition bound childhood in 
Turkey, a loveless marriage, a new life Canada, and the 1970s feminist revo-
lution with a tertiary education that promised liberation and the despair of 
losing the connection with her own daughter, Negrisse. Negrisse represents 
the liberated life that finally eludes her mother. Is the novel suggesting that 
liberation for daughters is only attainable by severing ties with their mothers?
Anna’s story encourages readers to ponder their own complex histories, 
to consider the interaction between history, culture, and family. Sev’er also 
reminds readers that the constraints of patriarchal motherhood can threaten 
women in small but catastrophic ways. Nonetheless, her story of four genera-
tions of women is powerfully and lovingly rendered as “a beautiful, challeng-
ing and sometimes foreboding tapestry.”
My Mother Did Not Tell Stories
Laurie Kruk.
Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2012.
reviewed by dorsía smith silva
Laurie Kruk’s volume of poems, My Mother Did Not Tell Stories, explores the 
realities of mothering. In the intimate opening poem, “First Birds,” Kruk re-
calls her daughter’s sounds when she is eight months old. Like the sound of a 
baby bird, the child’s guttural noise transforms from a bird in flight to a “nest” 
between mother and daughter. Kruk also explores the connections between 
mother, child, and nature in “Scratching Tree.” At the start of this poem, the 
expectant mother is the “Mama Bear” who fiercely protects her unborn child. 
Following birth, however, the daughter matures quickly and becomes a “she-
bear” with own “den.” Here, Kruk skillfully balances the mother’s longing for 
the return of her child with hope for the birth of grandchildren. She reminds 
readers that a part of mothering is the independence of children and connec-
tion to extended family.
book reviews
192             volume 4,  number 2
Noble Orphan: Poems
Andrea Nicki. 
Bradford, Ontario: Demeter Press, 2012.
reviewed by anne burke
A self-professed “orphan” and traitor who abandons her “unlivable” fami-
ly is transformed as the family hero in the title poem of Noble Orphan, the 
The title poem, “my mother did not tell stories,” concludes the volume’s 
first section and offers a fresh perspective on gender roles. The mother gives 
“advice” to her children, such as “don’t ask your brother to dry the dishes.” 
While the implied meaning is that this household chore should be delegated 
to a female, the speaker challenges this assumption. The speaker also sym-
pathetically reveals her mother’s struggle with the daily demands of mother-
hood and marriage, as seen when her mother keeps “running away.”
The second section, “River Valley Poems,” broadens the focus on mother-
hood to include nature and community. In “After-Earth: second spring,” for 
example, the speaker recalls losing property to the rising river and ponders 
the different seasons: “winter” was a “friend” and “spring” was “a dangerous 
time.” Yet, by the end of May, the speaker’s cabin is rebuilt by the river and 
the earth is fecund like a pregnant body: “the returned earth is placental.”
The last section, “Drawing Circles,” returns to the themes of motherhood, 
marriage, nature, and family. In “Translating the Bush,” the speaker’s dream 
of pregnancy evokes her grandmother’s life in a “cabin-cocoon on the river-
bank.” She marvels at her grandmother’s ability to balance her numerous dai-
ly chores with helping women with “swollen white bellies.” The speaker also 
reflects upon her daughter’s activities, such as “chasing toads and butterflies,” 
as the women in the poem merge into the different elements of earth.
By the concluding poem, “How to Look Good Naked,” Kruk adopts a 
lighter, more humorous approach. As she laments the numerous ways she has 
tried to lose weight through various workout and diet methods, the speaker 
notes that her scars and stretch marks from pregnancy should be celebrat-
ed not hidden. The speaker states that women’s post-pregnancy bodies are 
strong “mappings” of where “babies were made” and “fathers were born.” She 
calls for women to rise “like a birch,” so they may stand in awe of their bodies’ 
strength. This last poem is a powerful ending that honours the maternal body.


My Mother Did Not Tell Stories

McGrady, Shannon

The Authentic Lived Experiences of Young Mothers: How Empowered Young Women Mother Within and Against the Institutions of Childhood, Gender and Motherhood