Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Don't Be Another Girl, Brittany M. Owens

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DON’T BE ANOTHER GIRL is a collection of poetry that braids together themes of familial relationships, death, abuse, mental illness, feminism, and attempts at healing. These free-verse and prose poems use pop culture, politics, and elements of nature as vehicles to explore and reject the violence of the western white patriarchy. In the first section the speaker questions the curses that flow out from bloodlines—genetic traits, behaviors, and gender expectations. The second section utilizes lyrical prose blocks that thread together trauma and sleep paralysis, following an emotionally immobilized speaker who struggles to step off a dangerous escalator, away from toxic …

Growth Theory, Samantha Leon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

GROWTH THEORY reckons with a natural world in distress and imagines what attributes and learnings are needed for the individual to become a more beneficial part of the natural world. What does a person’s interaction with their surroundings say about them, and say about the surroundings? Violence, art, relationships, community are all examined along with the mediums through which we record our reality: speaking, writing, singing, taking photos. Despite covering a breadth of physical places and topics, a central tension that takes place between fear and curiosity colors the manuscript throughout. Poems are ordered by subject or temporal consideration, but …

Switch, Freesia Walsh Mckee

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SWITCH is a collection of post-confessional feminist poems exploring what it means to be a Millennial, a witness, a woman, a daughter, a dissident, and a student and teacher at the same time. Bookended by two long poems, the poetic-narrative heart of this collection dives into experiences of queer self-actualization, violence, community, family, and love. Narratives about simultaneity, empathy, and politics drive home the message of these poems: the dailiness of our lives is both quotidian and profound.

SWITCH is inspired by writers like Ellen Bass, Audre Lorde, Allison Joseph, June Jordan, Judy Grahn, and Marge Piercy, who’ve used intimate, …

Magic City Gospel, Ashley M. Jones

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magic City Gospel is a collection of poems that explores themes of race and identity with a special focus on racism in the American South. Many of the poems deal directly with the author’s upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, the Magic City, and the ways in which the history of that geographical place informs the present. Magic City Gospel confronts race and identity through pop culture, history, and the author’s personal experiences as a black, Alabama-born woman. Magic City Gospel is, in part, influenced by the biting, but softly rendered truth and historical commentary of Lucille Clifton, the laid-back and inventive …