The River Mumma Wants Out by Lorna Goodison | Introduction & Overview

The River Mumma Wants Out Introduction

Lorna Goodison's “The River Mumma Wants Out,” published in 2005, is, on the surface, a lighthearted poem, making fun of people who look for happiness in things that glitter. Below the surface, however, the work is a scathing criticism of a popular culture that fosters insatiable desires, change for change's sake, and a lack of responsibility or spirituality. Goodison has set her poem in her homeland, Jamaica, but the message therein applies to all people everywhere.

Goodison published “River Mumma” at a time when she was equally established in the United States, where she was living with her husband and teaching at the University of Michigan, and in Jamaica, where she would return each summer. Having relationships with both her homeland and a new country provided her with the perspective needed to objectively evaluate each of the two cultures—and indeed, the assessment is fairly depressing. No one, the...
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