Summary

In “The Body of a Poor Girl,” the author describes the differences between the reactions of her parents to the birth of her younger brother, Matthew. Her mother stayed home, nursing the damage to her body and struggling with the fears and frustrations of having to take care of both a toddler and a newborn. Her father immediately went back to work, despite her mother pleading with him not to. This was the situation, the author says, that their poverty forced them into, a situation intensified by what she has since come to understand was the perspectives of the Ronald Reagan-era conservativism that was running the country. She describes how her mother voted for Reagan and, without knowing it, for the perpetuation of social and economic circumstances that were making her family’s life difficult.

Those circumstances, the author also suggests, were further...