Olds, Sharon : The Meal

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Eating Disorder, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Women's Health
Summary	This poem is narrated by a school girl watching her anorexic mother force herself to eat cottage cheese so she can stay alive for her daughter. Apparently the mother's mother has also died young (at age twenty or so), and this mother at forty has no will to live, but forces herself to survive for the sake of her child.
Commentary	The daughter/narrator remembers her mother force feeding herself cottage cheese, seen as a breast-image and shape of milk--sometimes curdled and unpleasant ("giving off a cold moony light"). But the daughter's memory shifts to the spoon and her mother's courage and ironic sacrifice (since she would have preferred to die) to live for her child.
Source	The Gold Cell
Publisher	Knopf
Place Published	1987
Alternate Source	The Tyranny of the Normal
Alternate Publisher	Kent State Univ. Press
Alternate Edition	1996
Alternate Editors	Carol Donley & Sheryl Buckley
Place Published	Kent, Ohio
Annotated by	Donley, Carol
Date of Entry	04/16/96