New Books Network Rayanne Haines, "What Kind of Daughter" (Frontenac House Press, 2024)
Dec 3, 2025
Rayanne Haines, an award-winning hybrid author and poet, dives deep into her poignant new book, which blends poetry and essay to explore themes of grief and identity. She shares the emotional journey of coping with her mother's cancer diagnosis, revealing the complex love-hate relationship she navigates. Rayanne discusses the creative process behind her visceral imagery and the unique structure of her work, highlighting the importance of capturing the nuances of grief. Listeners are left pondering how we engage with the spaces of loss and family dynamics.
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Grief Began The Book
- Rayanne Haines began writing while her mother was alive because she couldn't grieve publicly and needed a private place to process.
- The book grew from that private grieving into a wider exploration of gendered expectations and intergenerational trauma.
Form Should Mirror Feeling
- Haines resisted forcing the collection into one form because grief felt multifaceted and required hybrid modes.
- She allowed the book to take shape in poetry and prose to match the nuance of anticipatory and actual grief.
Complex Love For A Difficult Mother
- Haines portrays her mother as a complicated, powerful woman who both supported her writing and drove her mad with small habits.
- She insists on writing the full truth of that complexity rather than smoothing contradictions.
