Family Stories, Poetry, and Women's Work: Knit Four, Frog One (Poems)

by Sandra L. Faulkner

This book is a memoir in poetry about family stories, mother-daughter relationships, women’s work, mothering, writing, family secrets, and patterns of communication in close relationships. Faulkner knits connections between a DIY (do-it-yourself) value, economics, and family culture through the use of poems and images, which present four generations of women in her family and trouble “women’s work” of mothering, cooking and crafting.

130 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2014

About the author

In my research, writing, and advocacy about close relationships and relational communication, I incorporate theory and research from a variety of interpersonal, sexuality, health, feminist, and culture literatures to interrogate sexuality and identity. I focus on the role of culture and relational processes in discussions and discourse about sexuality and stigmatized identities in interpersonal relationships using qualitative and critical research methods. I am interested in how relational processes and goals influence disclosure decisions about sexual information and potentially stigmatizing identities, how the negotiation of identities influences relational health, how larger discourses surrounding identity influence and shape our relational experiences, and how we narrate and re-narrate our experiences for personal and social change.