American Studies Commons^™

Thaw: A Memoir, Diane Bush

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This collection of creative nonfiction essays is a hybrid text of visual and verbal narratives located broadly within the genres of memoir, research-based nonfiction, and history. Women's memoirs, including a number of non-traditional texts, historical narratives, and an archival collection of photographs, provided springboards for the exploration of and reflection on the emotional terrain of loss, the ache of remembrance, and the ultimate desire for peace.

Ultimately, this work is a search for solace amidst emotional upheaval, beginning in childhood, after the deaths of my father, mother, first husband, and beloved aunt. Unable to sit still with my grief, I …