For She Is the Tree of Life: Grandmothers Through the Eyes of Women Writers Book

	Introduction	1
	For She Is a Tree of Life	7
	Childhood in Mexico	9
	The Last Diamond of Summer	15
	Rifka, Grandma Rae	19
	I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings	24
	Grandmother	30
	Dancing the Rain Dance with Nana	33
	Scrim-Shaw	35
	Pearl Bell Pittman	39
	Lemon Meringue Pie	45
	Cordelia Moellendick	48
	Pears	51
	Grandmother's Nervous Stomach	53
	heirloom hocked	62
	Carrie Adella	63
	Cottonbound	69
	Mammy	71
	The Trunk in the Attic	75
	Obasan in Suburbia	77
	Memories	82
	Grandma's Stern Expression	87
	The Weakness	91
	Breaking Up Grandma	93
	Mary Nina	95
	Hannah and Alice	97
	I Lost It at the Movies	103
	The Button Box	108
	Native Origin	111
	The Sound of My Name	117
	Carrie Jamison Whittaker	118
	Gramma Minnie	121
	Remembering Honeycake	124
	For My Grandmothers	132
	Rosaura, My Grandmother	134
	Memorial Day	136
	Perfect Misery	138
	Personal Effects	141
	Bobe Tillie Knows a Girl	143
	The Good Stuff	146
	The Grandmother Songs	149
	Birthday Poem for My Grandmother	153
	The End of the Reign of Queen Helen	154
	Recipe for Grief	158
	Bodily Harm	159
	The Buck	165
	Froggy Gremlin, My Grandmother, and Me	167
	Letter to Grandma	170
	Mimi, Passing	173
	One Death	178
	The Empress of Scents and Non-Scents	184
	Second Language	184
	The House of the Spirits	186
	Hanging the Wash at Midnight	195
	Bone of My Bones: A Grandmother Workbook	199
	Notes on Contributors	205