ABOUT THIS BOOKPoems that address cultural pressures placed on women and girls.
This is a book for those who were raised to be girls and expected to become women, for those who were told they were too girly and not girly enough, and for those who were ogled, talked over, touched, fed, imagined, and indoctrinated in ways they didn’t want. Angela Hume writes directly about the experience of womanhood, addressing the boundaries and pressures imposed from childhood on. She considers the persistent instructions to smile, be quiet, and act happy, all administered with the promise that this forced behavior would make everything better. The poems address rigid social norms and, ultimately, walk through the uncomfortable realizations about the bigger systems at play and call on us to examine our own complicity in them.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYAngela Hume is the author of Middle Time, also published by Omnidawn. Her chapbooks include Meat Habitats, Melos, The Middle, and Second Story of Your Body. With Gillian Osborne, she coedited Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field.