Leila Farjami: Healing the Mother Wound

Amanda Fields and Holly Rizzuto Palker chat with Leila Farjami, author of Daughter of Salt, about breaking the chain of familial obligations and healing from being a child of war. Daughter of Salt is a poetry collection focused on a speaker who fiercely engages with and questions her mother, her father, ancestors, and herself. Across the poems, patriarchy, intergenerational trauma, and displacement swirl together, colored by the frustration at being expected to hold it all together for everyone else; as Farjami writes, “A daughter made of salt-a dead sea to keep bodies afloat.” Throughout, the daughter vacillates between rebellion, acceptance, and empathy, searching for healing from a childhood marked by war and violence. This collection moves the reader into remembrance and healing; the preservation and renewal of the self that occurs when grace is given to others and ourselves, when we allow ourselves to keep close the memories we share with those we have lost, and use them to build a foundation for a better future. Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet and trauma-focused psychotherapist. Her debut, Daughter of Salt, received the Editors’ Selection for Poetry by Trio House Press. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Review Award in Poetry, the Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Award, and a 2025 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, her poems appear in Ploughshares, AGNI, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles. Links: Website Pre-order Daughter of Salt Leila Farjami Instagram This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit literarymama.substack.com