Girl Trouble by Diana Whitney Reviewed by Aline Soules

Girl Trouble by Diana Whitney

Reviewed by Aline Soules

Publisher: CavanKerry Press

ISBN: 978-1960327192

Publication Date: April 7, 2026

Pages: 96

The title Girl Trouble and the dedication “for the survivors” give the reader an understanding of the purpose of this book. The poet  juxtaposes the exploration of a girl’s teen years against the trouble that comes to girls and women against their will. Her themes of being female and queer come up against the trauma of sexual violence in a patriarchal world. Emerging from her personal experience and the world in which women must live creates tension throughout these poems. Her dedication acknowledges and empathizes with those who survive.

In the section, “Troubled and Troubling,” the poet opens with “Watching Thelma and Louise During Lockdown with My Daughters.” The daughters, only named by their initials C and A, ask what happens in the movie before it ends. The “I”, the mom, the poet remembers scenes that might not be good or easy for C and A to watch, concluding: “I already messed up,” and “I hadn’t been raped yet.” This matter-of-fact tone makes the statements all the more devastating and poignant as the mom holds hands with the daughters, like Thelma and Louise. Already, the poet introduces the innocence of the daughters beside her own experience to come and the society in which all three live. The movie ends and the poem does, too:

			                    …a magic feminist
       ride to the afterlife while we’re stuck here 
       on the ground, on the couch, in the house
       where it’s dark dark dark
       all around, the future pressed hard
       against the windows.

The title poem “Girl Trouble” follows: “When the trouble began she was barely / eleven…” What follows is detail after detail, lines like “…bubble gum / blowpop mouth precocious as a book cover” and “essence of shame & strawberry shampoo, depilatory burn of / white cream on her pits.” We are left to imagine what it means that the trouble involves being “barely eleven” or “barely undressed.” The unspoken holds the horror.

The poems unfold with violence and sex and longing. The poet explores dirty magazines, a locked office door to watch porn, and taunting boys in school. They lead to the final poem of this section, “Let Me Walk You Through It,” which gives a matter-of-fact, blow-by-blow description of an abortion. Given in second person point of view, someone describes what will happen to the “you.” Afterwards, the “you” is told “You don’t even know how lucky you are” because the parents paid, they didn’t judge, and the boyfriend held her hand. Yet, at the end, after the baby is buried and the “you” is told to sink into amnesia, the “I” spies a box “…hiding a journal of teenage history, / damp pages you will keep safe for decades, as testimony.”

“Cross me Twice,” the second section begins with “Hate Poem for Animal House,” implying the protagonist is older in this section. But the game is the same, debauchery, drinking, sex, this time centered on hating “frat boys” and their mothers. “I’m sorry your daughter got hurt / but I have to believe my son,” one mother says. Even women can’t be trusted.

The poems continue, relentless, only this time, outdoors. “Pastoral with Hooters Decal” ends with the speaker asking, “Come on already don’t be a prude…Show the goddamn world / what you were born to do.” “Sons and mothers” ends with “…Any protest / tamped down like the faint / exhale of her no.” In “Phantom,” comes the line “No one wants to read this story.” There’s anger, too. “My Phone Reminds Me It’s Mercury Retrograde” makes the reader feel the trauma of school shootings. In “Zenith,” the “I” “commune[s] / with crickets, peepers, a thousand frogs / trilling It’s June why aren’t you happy?” Even animals feed despair back to the “I.”

The third section, “Open Secret,” is even darker. In “Leotards,” the body of the poem is punctuated by commentary. Descriptions of little girls interspersed with lines like “Your childhood cannot protect you.” Comments like “They buried reports / of abuse in a file cabinet.” And the ultimate question: “How much is a little girl worth?”

There are poems about girls trying to escape and drowning, girls who are runaways, girls who are abandoned, girls trying to survive. More than one poem is titled “Girls Who Had Nothing.” In her Notes at the end of the poems, the poet explains that the first of these comes from a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, while the other two comes from survivors included a docuseries about Epstein. There is also a redacted poem, “Mission Statement / Rape Narrative,” and a “Survivor Song.” 

“Praise the Ending,” the fourth section, brings agency to the the poet. In “Queen of Swords,” she writes, “I don’t want to owe anybody // anything anymore.” It ends with

       At the end of the long season 
       of obligation

       comes the edge of truth—
       odorless, humming,

       tempered like a blade.

“Body Count” ends with “But your body counts too.” In “Hum,” the poet hears “a hum // something small “wanting in / It’s not over yet // far from it.”

Yet, there is hope in this section. In “My 16-Year-Old Self Makes Out with Jaimie Rossi,” the poet has sex with a woman. In “My 17-Year-Old Self Gets Voted Best Body,” the poet celebrates the glory of her body “that no one will ever classify.” In “My 18-Year-Old Self Tells Chris Warren to Wear a Condom,” the poet says “No glove, no love.”

In the last poem, “Gemini Moon,” the poet revels in what her body can do: “run up mountains,” “scramble…/ over rocks and streams,” and be “a water spirit / at home in lakes and rivers.” She ends:

I’m not saying I’m a mermaid but I swim with that grace. 

I’m straight up elemental, tethered to this place.

The “Notes” explain the source of her poems, as illustrated above. In her note about “Siren Song,” the poet writes: “I set a rule for myself never to use the names or words of the perpetrators. I wanted to amplify the voices of the survivors without giving the predators any more airtime.” 

That’s what she’s done.

The publisher’s mission to “explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life” and bring that “to the underserved” is well met by Diana Whitney. She has bravely laid forth her own experiences for the sake of her art and the survivors of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse, and calls on the reader to engage with both through her bold poems.

Diana Whitney holds a B.A. from Dartmouth, an M.A. from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and an M.F.A. from New England College. An advocate for survivors of sexual violence in her Vermont hometown and beyond, Ms. Whitney works as a developmental editor and a community organizer for a rural LGBTQ+ nonprofit.

Aline Soules’ poetry, fiction, and book reviews have appeared in Kenyon Review, Houston Literary Review, Poetry Midwest, Galway Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, and others. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Online: https://alinesoules.com

29 July 2026