An Honest Woman

by Jónína Kirton

An Honest Woman by Jónína Kirton confronts us with beauty and ugliness in the wholesome riot that is sex, love, and marriage. From the perspective of a mixed-race woman, Kirton engages with Simone de Beauvoir and Donald Trump to unravel the norms of femininity and sexuality that continue to adhere today.

Kirton recalls her own upbringing, during which she was told to find a good husband who would “make an honest woman” out of her. Exploring the lives of many women, including her mother, her contemporaries, and well-known sex-crime stories such as the case of Elisabeth Fritzl, Kirton mines the personal to loosen the grip of patriarchal and colonial impositions.

An Honest Woman explores the many ways the female body is shaped by questions that have been too political to ask: What happens when a woman decides to take her sexuality into her own hands, dismissing cultural norms and the expectations of her parents? How is a young woman’s sexuality influenced when she is perceived as an “exotic” other? Can a woman reconnect with her Indigenous community by choosing Indigenous lovers?

Daring and tender in their honesty and wisdom, these poems challenge the perception of women’s bodies as glamorous and marketable commodities and imagine an embodied female experience that accommodates the role of creativity and a nurturing relationship with the land.

Genres: Poetry, Indigenous

104 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2017

About the author

Jónína Kirton, an Icelandic and Red River Métis poet and citizen of the Métis Nation of BC currently lives in New Westminster BC, the unceded territory of the Halkomelem speaking peoples. She was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Treaty 1, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis. She was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her third book, Standing in a River of Time, merges poetry and lyrical memoir to take us on a journey exposing the intergenerational effects of colonization on her Métis family. It was released in 2022 to much critical acclaim.

Reviews

[Maia Caron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Betsy Warland, author of Oscar of Between, wrote about Jónína Kirton’s latest collection of poetry, An Honest Woman: “Her (Kirton’s) raw honesty is unsettling and uncomfortable, because it can be our truth too.”

Shortly after Jónína’s book arrived in my mailbox, I took it to the hair salon, thinking that I would read while getting my hair done. By the time I got to her third poem, “Who Owns This Body?” I was so moved I had to close the book or embarrass myself by crying in front of everyone. She had touched a nerve. The kind of thing a woman might admit only to a therapist or a best friend in secret is laid bare in these poems about dangerous fathers, lost brothers, of being “the mouse who played dead,” and a target of men’s eyes that “are on us everywhere.”

Good poetry reveals startling truths about our shared humanity and opening our hearts to emotions we put much effort into denying. Thank you Jónína for bearing witness to your own experiences and in doing so, healing every wounded woman who opens your book.

[Eaton Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visceral, spare poetry that goes inside you to your wounded spots. Highly recommend. (As an aside, so lovely that Kirton's first book came out when she was 60. Age powers us, despite that the young think.)

[Kaitlyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really expecting myself to relate to this writer and her work but I just couldn't, therefore the 3 stars. But, the poetry was raw and vulnerable and I can't help but applaud the writer for taking that risk. Will be looking forward to next time I can read her work!

[Tara Borin · Rating 4 out of 5]

With tightly controlled, spare language, Jonina Kirton explores deeply personal issues of addiction, abuse, identity and sexuality.

[Malou · Rating 5 out of 5]

This hit home.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this collection of poems.

[Arlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Packed a punch.

[gabby · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25/5