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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, North America
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
The Politics & Poetics Of Audience Creation In Contemporary Epistolary Memoir, Sarah M. Davis
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy as works of life writing that leverage the epistolary form to engage their direct maternal addressees and audiences beyond them in revision and reconstruction of identity. Secondary audiences are considered in light of Michael Warner’s “Publics and Counterpublics,” and the social affordances of the epistolary form and self-constructive affordances of life writing are analyzed in tandem as a hybrid epistolary memoir form. Specifically, this project explores how the epistolary memoir form affords Vuong and Laymon opportunities for the process of personal, relational, and communal identity construction, …
Covered In Dust: Coming Of Age In A Gazebo Factory, Jason A. Ney
Covered In Dust: Coming Of Age In A Gazebo Factory, Jason A. Ney
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Covered in Dust: Coming of Age in a Gazebo Factory is a memoir that chronicles the three summers I spent working in the factories at Chestnut Hill Gazebos. The memoir focuses on three narrative strands: the day-to-day life of a factory worker, the struggles within and eventual breakdown of my relationship with my girlfriend, and how my job at Chestnut Hill helped me critique my fundamentalist Christian roots by forcing me into a deeper understanding of my faith and its relationship to the world outside the confines of my upbringing. The critical afterword uses essays by Leona Toker and other …