The Grandmother in Girls That Never Die: Character Analysis

Safia Elhillo’s Girls That Never Die is a book of poems that reads like a memoir in fragments, tracing a speaker’s life from her birth in 1990 through her adulthood, her divorce, and her reckoning with the inherited weight of being a girl in a Sudanese-American family. The grandmother appears not as a character with a sustained storyline but as a recurring presence—a figure of ancestral memory, lineage, and the physical and linguistic inheritance the speaker carries. She is introduced in the opening chapter as part of the family tableau at the narrator’s birth, and she returns in later poems as a point of reference for questions about purity, naming, and the body. This analysis treats the grandmother as a composite figure assembled from the evidence in the text, distinguishing what the poems state explicitly from what the reader can reasonably interpret.

Overview: A Figure of Ancestral Memory

The grandmother is the narrator’s maternal grandmother, a woman described as elegant, beautiful, and older than the independent state of Sudan. In the chapter “Final Weeks, 1990,” the narrator places her in the hospital waiting room on the day of her birth, noting that her grandmother was thirteen years older than the country of Sudan itself. She is described with a film-star appearance: black hair feathered down her back, set in hot rollers, with tattooed eyebrows that appear as “blue-black parentheses.” The narrator notes that her grandmother and grandfather are “placid companions” whose courtship cooled into a sort of siblinghood, and that she has never seen them touch.

Beyond this physical portrait, the grandmother functions as a symbol of the past that the narrator cannot fully access. In “How to Say,” the narrator imagines alternate versions of herself with faces resembling photographs of the girl who became her grandmother, comparing her features to Arabic script. This comparison links the grandmother to language itself—specifically to the Arabic that the narrator struggles to speak fluently. The grandmother thus becomes a figure of origin, both biological and cultural, standing at the threshold of the narrator’s identity.

Plot Role: Presence and Absence

The grandmother does not drive the plot in a conventional sense. She appears in a handful of chapters, each time serving a different function. In “Final Weeks, 1990,” she is part of the birth scene, a witness to the narrator’s entry into the world. In “How to Say,” she exists only as a photograph, a face the narrator imagines as a template for alternate selves. In “Taxonomy,” the narrator refers to herself as “her grandmother’s grandgirl,” and mentions that her grandmother’s grandmother is called “nena,” possibly not her real name. In “Infibulation Study,” the narrator states that the Arabic word for “cut,” when conjugated, is the name of one of her grandmothers, and that she will not ask that grandmother about cutting because she is told the grandmother does not remember.

These appearances are brief, but they accumulate into a portrait of a woman who is both physically present and emotionally distant. The grandmother is never given dialogue in the supplied evidence. She is described, remembered, and speculated about, but she never speaks. This silence is itself significant, aligning with the book’s broader theme of silence, shame, and the unspoken. The grandmother’s lack of voice suggests that the stories of older women are often untold, or told only through the bodies and names they pass down.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Because the grandmother is not a central actor, her motivations must be inferred from the few actions the narrator describes. In “Final Weeks, 1990,” the grandmother is present at the hospital, waiting for the birth of her grandchild. This act of presence suggests care, though the narrator does not describe any interaction between them. The grandmother’s appearance—her hair set in rollers, her eyebrows tattooed—indicates a concern with presentation, a trait the narrator later connects to the policing of girls’ bodies. The grandmother’s beauty is described as a kind of performance: “any suggestion of curl or coil since burnt away & set every morning in hot rollers.” This detail implies a deliberate shaping of the body to meet certain standards, a theme that recurs throughout the book.

In “The Cairo Apartments,” the narrator recalls that her grandmothers were “beautiful & suited to exile,” with “enormous coifs of blackened hair” and tattooed eyeliner. The phrase “suited to exile” suggests that the grandmother adapted to displacement, carrying her beauty as a form of armor or identity. The narrator contrasts the grandmothers with her own mother, who was “less glamorous & always tired, always at work.” This contrast positions the grandmother as a figure of a previous generation, one that maintained a certain aesthetic even in the face of loss and migration.

The grandmother’s most significant action, in terms of the book’s themes, is her silence about the past. In “Infibulation Study,” the narrator says she will not ask her grandmother about cutting because “the grandmother does not remember.” This statement is ambiguous: it could mean the grandmother genuinely has no memory, or it could mean the family has decided not to speak of it. Either way, the grandmother’s silence becomes a model for the narrator’s own difficulty in naming her body and her wounds. The narrator notes that Arabic uses euphemism, saying “purified” instead of “cut,” and that she was born uncut and named for a woman who died. The grandmother’s name, which is the conjugated form of the word for “cut,” ties her directly to the practice the narrator cannot name.

Chronological Arc: From Birth to Memory

The grandmother’s arc in the book is not linear. She appears first in the birth scene, then in memories, then in the narrator’s imagination. This non-linear structure reflects the way memory works: the grandmother is not a character who develops over time but a figure who is revisited and reinterpreted. In “Final Weeks, 1990,” she is a young woman in her thirties, waiting for her daughter to give birth. In “How to Say,” she exists as a photograph, a girl who “became” the grandmother. In “The Cairo Apartments,” she is part of a collective memory of grandmothers in exile. In “Summer Triangle,” the narrator describes a ritual washing that involves “the grandmother’s feet in ablution,” suggesting a religious or cleansing practice associated with her.

This arc moves from the grandmother as a physical presence to the grandmother as a memory, and finally to the grandmother as a symbol. By the end of the book, the grandmother is less a person than a set of associations: beauty, exile, silence, and the Arabic language. The narrator’s relationship to her grandmother is thus a relationship to her own past, which she can neither fully reclaim nor escape.

Relationships: The Grandmother and the Narrator

The central relationship is between the grandmother and the narrator, though it is mediated by distance and silence. The narrator describes herself as “her grandmother’s grandgirl” in “Taxonomy,” a phrase that suggests a lineage of girls passing through generations. The grandmother is also connected to the narrator’s name. In “Final Weeks, 1990,” the narrator is named Safia Yagoub after a dead great-aunt, and her mother’s name, Safaa, shares the first syllable. The grandmother is not directly involved in the naming, but she is part of the family structure that determines it.

In “How to Say,” the narrator imagines alternate selves with faces like her grandmother’s, comparing her features to Arabic script. This comparison suggests that the grandmother represents a version of the narrator that is more connected to her heritage, more fluent in the language and culture she has lost. The narrator’s inability to speak Arabic fluently is a source of grief, and the grandmother’s face becomes a symbol of that loss. The narrator asks, “how can I love a word without knowing it in Arabic?”—a question that extends to her relationship with her grandmother, whom she loves but cannot fully know.

The relationship is also marked by what is not said. In “Infibulation Study,” the narrator will not ask her grandmother about cutting, respecting the family’s silence. This decision reflects a broader pattern in the book: the narrator often withholds questions from the older women in her family, aware that some things are not spoken. The grandmother’s silence is thus both a source of frustration and a form of protection, a way of keeping certain wounds unopened.

Key Decisions and Consequences

The grandmother makes few decisions in the text, but the decisions attributed to her have significant consequences. The most notable is her decision to remain silent about the past, particularly about the practice of cutting. The narrator states that the grandmother “does not remember,” and this lack of memory—whether real or performed—means that the narrator cannot learn the truth from her. The consequence is that the narrator must piece together her understanding of her body and her heritage from other sources: her cousins, her own speculation, and the euphemisms of the language.

Another decision, implied rather than stated, is the grandmother’s choice to maintain her appearance in exile. The narrator describes her as “suited to exile,” suggesting that her beauty was a deliberate adaptation. This decision has consequences for the narrator, who inherits a standard of feminine presentation that she both resists and internalizes. In “For My Friends, in Reply to a Question,” the narrator describes going through daily motions, dressing in bright colors, and maintaining her appearance despite feeling detached from her life. This behavior echoes the grandmother’s performance of beauty, suggesting that the narrator has inherited not only her features but also her coping mechanisms.

Theme and Symbol Connections

The grandmother is connected to several of the book’s central themes. Most directly, she is a figure of language, naming, and the inadequacy of words. The narrator compares her features to Arabic script, and her name is the conjugated form of the word for “cut.” This connection suggests that the grandmother embodies the gap between what can be said and what cannot. The narrator knows ninety-nine names for God but lacks a word for her own body in Arabic; the grandmother’s name, which should be a source of identity, instead points to a wound.

The grandmother is also central to the theme of the policing of girls’ bodies and the demand for purity. The narrator’s name, Safia, means “pure,” and she describes being raised to bleed in a man’s bed. The grandmother, with her tattooed eyebrows and carefully set hair, represents a generation of women who shaped their bodies to meet external standards. The narrator’s question in “Pomegranate”—whether purity is wasted on her—echoes the grandmother’s legacy of bodily discipline.

The theme of silence, shame, and the unspoken is embodied in the grandmother’s refusal to speak about the past. The narrator notes that Arabic uses euphemism, saying “purified” instead of “cut,” and that she will not ask her grandmother because she is told she does not remember. This silence is passed down through generations, and the narrator must decide whether to break it.

The grandmother is also a figure of displacement and the search for home. She is described as “suited to exile,” and her beauty is tied to her ability to adapt to new places. The narrator, who dreams of missing connecting flights and speaking fluent Arabic, inherits this sense of displacement. The grandmother’s face, imagined as a template for alternate selves, represents a home the narrator can never fully return to.

Finally, the grandmother is central to the theme of survival and intergenerational inheritance. The narrator describes a line of tired women whose faces show little aging, and she feels her girlhood is gone for generations. The grandmother, who survived exile and the demands of purity, passes down not only her features but also her strategies for survival. The narrator’s question in “Girls That Never Die”—“But what if I will not die?”—can be read as a response to the grandmother’s legacy, a refusal to be defined by the wounds of the past.

The Grandmother as Symbol: Interpretation vs. Fact

It is important to distinguish between what the text states explicitly and what the reader can interpret. The text states that the grandmother was present at the narrator’s birth, that she was beautiful, that her eyebrows were tattooed, and that she was older than the independent state of Sudan. It states that the narrator compares her features to Arabic script and that her name is the conjugated form of the word for “cut.” It states that the narrator will not ask her grandmother about cutting because she is told she does not remember.

What the text does not state is the grandmother’s internal experience. The reader does not know whether the grandmother’s silence is a choice, a trauma response, or a simple lack of memory. The reader does not know whether the grandmother was cut, though the narrator’s speculation in “Infibulation Study” suggests it is a possibility. These are interpretations, not facts, and they should be treated as such. The grandmother remains, in many ways, a mystery—a figure whose face the narrator can imagine but whose story she cannot access.

Five Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. How is the grandmother described in the chapter “Final Weeks, 1990”?

The grandmother is described as elegant and beautiful, with black hair feathered down her back and tattooed eyebrows that appear as blue-black parentheses. She is noted to be thirteen years older than the independent state of Sudan, and she waits in the hospital with the narrator’s grandfather on the day of the narrator’s birth.

2. What does the narrator compare her grandmother’s features to in “How to Say”?

The narrator compares her grandmother’s features to Arabic script. She imagines alternate versions of herself with faces resembling photographs of the girl who became her grandmother, linking her grandmother’s appearance to the language the narrator struggles to speak.

3. Why does the narrator say she will not ask her grandmother about cutting in “Infibulation Study”?

The narrator says she will not ask that grandmother because she is told the grandmother does not remember. The narrator also notes that Arabic uses euphemism, saying “purified” instead of “cut,” and that the Arabic word for “cut,” when conjugated, is the name of one of her grandmothers.

4. How does the narrator describe her grandmothers in “The Cairo Apartments”?

The narrator describes her grandmothers as “beautiful & suited to exile,” with enormous coifs of blackened hair and tattooed eyeliner. She contrasts them with her own mother, who was less glamorous and always tired, always at work.

5. What role does the grandmother play in the poem “Summer Triangle”?

In “Summer Triangle,” the narrator describes constructing a body from clay, dried blood, dirt, and water, then purifying it through ritual washing that involves the grandfather’s blind left eye and the grandmother’s feet in ablution. The grandmother is thus associated with a cleansing ritual, a figure of purification.