Growing Up

Gatwood presents the reader with a wide range of experiences from different formative periods in her life in order to explore the complexities and the conflicts of growing up and losing one’s sense of innocence.

The first state of innocence we see the speaker lose in the collection comes in the very first poem, “Jordan Convinced Me That Pads Are Disgusting.” In the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s friend Jordan criticizes her for using pads instead of tampons when she gets her period. “I was terrified of tampons,” the speaker says, “or rather/terrified of the undiscovered crater, the muscle that holds and pulls/and keeps and sheds” (3). Thus, we see the speaker’s fear of tampons actually stems from her anxieties regarding her own body, which she has not yet come to fully understand. This lack of knowledge regarding her body...