Add to ORKGThese poems introduce a speaker reckoning her identity through the lens of childhood memory, Southern American culture and landscape, and the undulations of romantic relationships. Divided into three sections organized in a rough chronology, the speaker asks questions about the nature of love and acceptance, sisterhood, anxiety, and loss. Often, she comes to no conclusion, but finds meaning and power in the mining of inner and outer lives: memory, psyche, and community. The poems contain both narrative and lyric elements. While they oscillate between rural and urban settings, the speaker's vulnerability and self-consciousness remain steadfast throughout and serve as the poems' binding feature