Book Review: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980 by Lucille Clifton

Good Woman feels less like reading a literary monument and more like being invited into Lucille Clifton’s life. Published in 1987, the collection gathers poetry from more than a decade of Clifton’s early career along with autobiographical writing. It includes work from Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman and Two-Headed Woman. The collection was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Clifton writes about womanhood without trying to make it pretty. Bodies age. Families struggle. Women desire, remember, raise children, lose people and continue living. Her language is often spare, which makes the emotion hit harder because there is nowhere for it to hide. Some of the strongest moments come when Clifton focuses on women other people might overlook. In “miss rosie,” she sees dignity in a woman others could easily dismiss. Elsewhere, she turns attention toward mothers, daughters, sexuality and her own body.

The collection also shows how wide Clifton’s range was. She could write about race and history, then turn around and write something deeply personal or quietly funny. Nothing feels forced into a single version of Black womanhood. That is what makes Good Woman worth returning to decades later. Clifton makes room for women to be complicated, tired, sensual, angry, funny, grieving and joyful.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 ink pens

For readers discovering Lucille Clifton for the first time, Good Woman is an excellent place to start. It gives you more than her famous poems. It gives you the woman behind them.