Washing My Mother's Body: A Ceremony for Grief stories Victorian gender rituals

Victorian gender rituals

The language of the scientists that Erdrich sometimes quotes in epigraphs seems reductive in comparison to the richness of tone and meaning that these poems— filled with puns

including the M

Michelle Grabner Carl Bogner with Oliver James Moon

Washing My Mother's Body: A Ceremony for Grief stories Victorian gender ritualsA beautifully illustrated edition of Poet Laureate Joy Harjo's poem "Washing My Mother's Body," which offers a way through grief when the loss appears unbearable. As I wash my mother's face, I tell her how beautiful she is, how brave, how her beauty and bravery live on in her grandchildren. Her face is relaxed, peaceful. Her earth memory body has not left yet, but when I see her the next day, embalmed and in the casket in the funeral home, it will be