Bad Daughter

Bad Daughter explores misbehavior—its risky pleasures and often tragic consequences—through poems about “bad” daughters, sisters, and their mothers. What happens to the sister who obeys? What if a daughter refuses her inheritance? Can she? What sanctuary and what limits do worship and domesticity provide? Gorham adopts several lyric forms—‘morality tales,’ ironic prayers, scaled-down sonnets, sharp meditations on concepts such as envy, detachment, and immortality—to show that the self as forged by generations of women and girls is both subversive and enduring.