Even as I got older,
in my thirties
years away
from when I showed him books on OCD
when he took an interest in me
because parts of me came from his mold
sharing the disorder
although he never said
never admitted it to me.

By showing the narrator interacting with her father in this way, readers can see that the rituals that Edwards mentions in her collection are deeper and stronger than a medical condition. Family traditions and heredity become their own sort of condition in Voices Through Skin; they become traits passed down from one generation to the next. And it is this connection (along with the strength of the language) that prevents Voices Through Skin from being an esoteric collection that can only be understood by readers who are familiar with OCD. Whether it comes in the form of a medical condition or a favorite recipe, all readers can relate to the varying consequences of inheritance.

The second section of the collection (body) also addresses inheritance. Here, the main focus of the collection shifts from the OCD inherited from the father to the gender inherited from her mother. The section begins with “The Nurse on Percy,” a poem in which we see the narrator exposed to her father’s infidelity when she sees “the nurse, ‘Florence Nightingale’ half naked,” and then sees “father stop suddenly behind the front door screen.” Whether it is the emotional pain in this poem or the physical pain shown in “Riot in the Local High School, 1975,” where readers see “teenage girls stampede” and “schoolgirls swarm,” and “Big, young breasts pound beneath fabric,” the second half of the collection shows how the narrator learns both what it means to be a woman and the pains that come with the title of “woman.”

While the narrator is faced with many types of pain in both sections of the collection, Edwards does give readers a powerful narrator who, despite the other roles she must play, does not play the role of a victim. In “Your Attempt,” she listens to male companion’s repeated recollections of a suicide attempt. The poem begins with “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to stop you” but ends with “I’m sorry I can’t listen to the particulars,” showing that she refuses to be another plot point in the companion’s story, refuses to share space with “the small toddler chair” or “black leather strap,” or “the old, thin metal pipe” that outline the victim’s experience. This resistance is also seen in the last stanza previously mentioned “Hot Tea Cooled” when the speaker asserts “It’s my tea, my milk, my water, / my way / to say to him, “I still don’t / have to drink it when it’s cold. / I’m not afraid to throw the rest away.” It is this strength, the willingness and power to “throw the rest away” that helps Edwards’ poems rise above the pitfalls normally present in collections that deal with illness or gender, and it helps readers recognize the narrator’s unwillingness to be a passive object in her world.

Voices Through Skin would be a strong collection if it only focused on the narrator’s struggles with OCD. Voices Through Skin would be a strong collection if it only focused on the narrator’s struggle to recognize her role as a woman in reference to the other women she encounters. However, Edward’s manages to mix both themes to show the meaning of the title. Everyone has voices seeping through their skin, whether those voices come from family histories, genetics, or personal experience. And readers of this collection will forced to confront those voices every time they create a meal from a family recipe, slip on a pair on lucky socks, or see a parent’s face when they look in the mirror.