What Kind of Daughter?
by Rayanne Haines
What Kind of Daughter? is a poetic memoir by Rayanne Haines that considers identity and gender expectations while exploring the public perception of the space between the spaces we inhabit during periods of grieving, whether that grieving is based in loss of self or the loss of another. In this hybrid collection of poetry and essay, Haines reflects on her life growing up in rural Alberta, and considers the loss of her mother to cancer while asking questions such as how do we steer through holding patterns of almost grief, how do we navigate the terrain of discovery, how do we journey through the burden of care? In, What Kind of Daughter?Haines reflects on the choices women are asked to make and challenges readers to reflect on the way we value, devalue, or simply exist within the spaces of gender and grief.
This book is scheduled for public release in October, but is available now for pre-order. Books pre-ordered will ship as soon as we receive copies from the printer.
$19.95 CAD
Additional information
| Weight | .208 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 9 × 6 × 0.375 in |
| Page Count | 88 |
| Binding | Soft Cover with flaps |
| Year Published | 2024 |
Rayanne Haines
Rayanne Haines’ writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from, Fiddlehead, Impact: The Lives of Women After Concussion Anthology, Voicing Suicide Anthology, The Selkie Resiliency Anthology, Freefall, Wax Poetry and Arts, Funicular, Lida Lit Mag, and Indefinite Space among others. She is the host of the literary podcast, An Eloquent Bitch and is the Alberta NWT rep for the League of Canadian Poets. Rayanne is a 2019 Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award recipient. Past Executive Director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival, her poetry and prose have been shortlisted for a Canadian Authors Association Award and the John Whyte Memorial Essay Alberta Literary Award. Her current work focuses on mental health and intergenerational trauma. Tell the Birds your Body is Not a Gun is her second poetry collection.
Anyone who has known the bewilderment of grief will find companionship in this intimate book. Untethered by boundaries of genre or by the gendered expectations that shaped her early life, Haines shows us that vulnerability is also power, that beauty can inhabit loss, and that grief is indeed “a sapling”—a living thing to be tended.
~ Jennifer Bowering Delisle, author of Micrographia
A sinewy exploration of daughterhood and the weight of grief. Haines moves deftly between prose and verse, between memoir and fragments of memory. Her meditations cut to the heart of things – they’re prismatic, complex and always dripping with what’s real. The speaker’s voice radiates power and vulnerability in equal measure. She’s willing to look truth in the eye, even if that means staring down the illusions we cling to in order to survive. This is a book about cancer, about culture, about nature, about loss. It’s about control and the lack of control. Death is everywhere in these pages, and yet the reader is left with the hopeful spiral of life-goes-on, a loving gesture towards infinity.
~ Jaclyn Desforges, author of Danger Flower
An extraordinary reflection on the clarifying fire of grief, each poem deftly balances shadow and light. This is a portrait of a mountain of a woman who, having travelled the jagged landscape of despair, is unafraid to meet her own blazing eyes in the mirror and not flinch. What kind of daughter? This kind.
~ Titilope Sonuga, Edmonton’s 9th Poet Laureate