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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Don't Be Another Girl, Brittany M. Owens
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 …
Mandala Springs, Juleen Collins
Mandala Springs, Juleen Collins
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS MANDALA SPRINGS by Juleen Collins Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Debra Dean, Major Professor MANDALA SPRINGS is the small town setting for a story that explores the nature of secrets, lies, revelations, and the damage each can cause. The narrative follows Bodhi MacLachlan, a young woman who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder, back to the psychiatric hospital where she has resided in-patient multiple times. The long-term association with her psychiatrist becomes complicated when she reveals details of her affair with a secretive man. Meanwhile, she becomes obsessed with uncovering the mysteries of the relationship …
Nothing Normal Happens To Me: True Stories Of A Journey From Madness To Motherhood, Esther C. Martinez
Nothing Normal Happens To Me: True Stories Of A Journey From Madness To Motherhood, Esther C. Martinez
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Written in first person, NOTHING NORMAL HAPPENS TO ME is a memoir in essays that traces the narrator’s journey from self-destruction to creation. Part one encompasses the narrator’s lost years, after she breaks free from the tyranny of her mentally ill mother and goes to live on her own at 17. Part two provides context for those bad girl years, exploring her childhood when she identified with her histrionic mother. Part three comprises stories about the narrator’s years of awakening when she seeks out transcendence, faith, and a family of her own. The pieces vary tonally and stylistically as they …