1 mars 1999 - "Always Unsuitable"

Description:

“Always Unsuitable,” is a poem first published in Marge Piercy’s book of poetry titled “Early Grrrl,” published in 1999. As it goes in “Always Unsuitable,” a woman meets her boyfriend’s family for the first time. His mother immediately judges her. The narrator describes the experience “as if I had strolled into her dining room in a dirty negligee smelling gamy and sporting a strawberry on my neck.” Further along in the work, this narrator explains that she was not the “type,” that sons bring home for their mothers to meet. She remarks, “Where I came from, the nights I had wandered and survived, scared them, and where I would go they never imagined.” Piercy ends the poem with an icy, “Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend... I would have loved you better than you know how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.” I first encountered this poem, (which is one of my favorites of all time,) during my freshman year in my Women in Lit class. While reading Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, I immediately thought of it after encountering her poem, “Beauty.” It also explores the same idea of judging women for embracing their own sexuality, or women failing to fulfill the socially constructed role of someone who is “ladylike.” Shire depicts her sister, who “soaps between her legs… her small breasts bruised from sucking.” Her mother judges her daughter as the boyfriend’s mother from the first poem does, as her own mother “banned her from saying god’s name."

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