16 pages • 32 minutes read
Natalie DiazNo More Cake Here
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“My Brother at 3 A.M.” by Natalie Diaz (2012)
This poem also appears in the collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012). It is a pantoum, a poem written in four-line stanzas wherein the second and fourth lines of each stanza appear as the first and third lines of the next. The repetition in this poem loops through a scene in which a mother witnesses her son having a hallucination in the middle of the night.
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz (2012)
This poem uses the abecedarian form—a form that starts each new line with a successive letter of the alphabet. It considers the historical and lasting impact of the Christian Church and white European culture on people living in a native community.
“Naloxone” by William Brewer (2017)
This poem includes couplets—stanzas consisting of two lines each. It takes the perspective of a heroin addict. The speaker expresses their terror of being stuck in a perpetual cycle of near-death experiences after an overdose.
“Party’s End” by Pablo Neruda (1968)
A long poem in thirteen parts, Neruda’s piece speaks of family, poverty, work, and the meaning of human existence with dream-like language and specificity. Like Diaz’s speakers, Neurda’s speaker reflects on the natural landscape and the landscape of the body.
“Anchorage” by Joy Harjo (2008)
In this poem by Joy Harjo, beauty and despair inhabit the same moments. “Like “No More Cake Here,” the poem laments the institutional poverty and violence that disproportionately affects “mostly Native / and Black men” (Lines 33-34), and also, leaves room for joy.
“The Holy Twins” by Luci Tapahonso (2008)
Written by the inaugural poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, “The Holy Twins” is how the speaker defines “loss and love” (Line 38). Tapahonso writes: “For some reason, after everything, our rib cages / held up and continued to cradle tender hearts” (Lines 32-33). In contrast, the speaker of Diaz’s poem can only imagine how anxiety over the living might transform to grief for the dead.
Further Literary Resources
“This life is supposed to hurt” Natalie Diaz interviewed by Kaveh Akbar (2015)
In this interview from Divedapper, poets Kaveh Akbar and Natalie Diaz discuss reading poetry, blending literary genres, storytelling, the significance of literary elders, and the “emotional wonder” that came from writing “No More Cake Here” and the other poems in When My Brother Was an Aztec.
“Indians in T-shirts” by Elizabeth Harball (2012)
This essay acknowledges the Institute of American Indian Arts in its 50th year, and considers how, over the decades, its faculty and students have upended “expectations of what it means to be a Native American artist.”
“Poet Natalie Diaz Talks Image of Obsession and Native Heritage at Grove House” by Nina Mueller for The Student Life (2016)
This student newspaper article chronicles a visit by Diaz. In her talk, the poet stressed the importance and utility of the writer nurturing their “images of obsession.”
“A Body of Athletics” by Natalie Diaz (2015)
This essay and introduction to a special sports-themed issue explores how basketball (and other sports), the body, and growing up in a native community intersect and affect one another, both personally and historically.
In this hour-long video, Natalie Diaz weaves poems from her book When My Brother Was an Aztec with a discussion about writing about hard subjects, particularly family.
Related Titles
By Natalie Diaz
