Point of View

The stories in Milk Blood Heat are narrated in either first person or third person. The majority of the narrators/main characters are young women dealing with feelings of alienation or estrangement. The stories “Milk Blood Heat,” “Tongues,” “The Hearts of Our Enemies,” “Outside the Raft,” and “An Almanac of Bones” focus on adolescent girls dealing with the physical, emotional, and psychological changes commonly associated with this time of life. Of these five, the last two are narrated in first person, and “Outside the Raft” is distinct among the stories in the collection for featuring a narrator who is looking back at an early time in her life. From the perspective of adulthood, Shayla can recognize how the different formative incidents and relationships of her and Tweet's childhoods made them the women they became. “The Hearts of Our Enemies” is the only story told from...