Britni West

2 months ago | thebaffler.com | Britni West |Carley Gomez |Bongani Kona |Shoaib Shafi

Family lore has it that my mother joined the Patterson household when they lassoed her out of the Greybull River as a baby, floating by on a cow patty during the flood of ’63. However she came into the world, my mother would grow up in a three-bedroom trailer on a farm in rural Wyoming. The youngest of seven, she was always at the bottom of the dogpile and the last to get a bath. Taking after her own mother—quick to stitch a wound or slaughter a chicken—she’s kept my family scrappy.