The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Mullen, Harryette. “Shedding Skin.” Blues Baby: Early Poems (Bucknell University Press, 1981).

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the line number from which the quotation is taken.

Harryette Mullen's work is largely driven by wordplay and allusion, and concerns African American linguistic traditions, feminism, popular culture, consumerism, and identity politics. She has shared in interviews about her love for "the multiple meanings of words" and the "'double talk' of metaphor and simile," which can be seen in her free verse poem "Shedding Skin." The descriptions of shedding as a natural biological process symbolize transformation, liberation, and renewal as the speaker actively discards the "skin" of her past. Despite the vulnerable state this leaves her in, the speaker prefers to enact her agency over her body and identity.