Creative Writing Commons^™

A Group Of Hyenas Is A Cackle, Kristin Gallagher

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A GROUP OF HYENAS IS A CACKLE is a memoir about sisterhood, success, and self-worth. The memoir spans approximately twenty-five years in the memoir-speaker’s life and is divided into five sections. Book one explores her childhood through high school graduation, focusing on her experiences as the eldest sister in a hardscrabble, IrishCatholic family living in New England during the 1990s and its central defining eventthe death of her mother from a drug overdose. Book two examines a slice of adulthood in the protagonist’s twenties when she was a law student living in New York City with her sister. The remaining …

Own Way Girl, Melissa I. Aldana

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OWN WAY GIRL is a memoir about growing up in a Caribbean family of women. The memoir covers the narrator’s tentative beginnings as she was adopted by a single woman in Barbados at three months old until she turns sixteen and learns the secret that has weighed heavily on both her birth and adopted mother. This memoir explores the narrator’s layered relationship with her adopted mother, her complicated relationship with her birth mother, as well family dynamics with her adopted grandmother and adopted sisters. It interrogates the nature of kin and blood ties and probes the ultimate question of what …

The Death Of Superman, Shane F. Mcfarlane

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN is an autobiographical novel that covers the years from 7 to 17 in the life of Shane McFarlane, who struggles to overcome the effects of his inner-city environment and an addict father in and out of incarceration. The title is a metaphor for the decaying presence of the narrator’s father in his and his older brother’s life and the resulting consequences of that absence.

With the narrator’s father in prison, new threats emerge, including his mother’s ruthless boyfriend and his brother’s attraction to the allure of fast money. The narrator must ultimately make decisions governed by …

Split At The Root, Robert S. Gryder

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Influenced by— and sometimes in conversation with— diverse literary voices such as Dorothy Allision (BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA), Harry Crews (A CHILDHOOD), and Mark Doty (FIREBIRD), SPLIT AT THE ROOT is a literary bildungsroman told primarily in the narrative mode. The memoir traces the narrator’s volatile beginnings in the trailer parks of rural South Carolina in the 1980s to the day he accepted, sight unseen, an offer of admission to Yale University, boarding a plane in 1993 for the first time in his life. This memoir explores the narrator’s quest for agency, deploying the essayist mode to interrogate along the …

Origin Story, Rose Marion Lopez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

ORIGIN STORY

by

Rose Marion Lopez

Florida International University, 2020

Miami, Florida

Professor Julie Marie Wade, Major Professor

ORIGIN STORY is a collection of lyric essays that examines coming into adulthood and forging a life with a long-time significant other. These essays explore the speaker’s identity as a daughter, sister, partner, and eventual wife and mother across multiple states and countries of residence. They incorporate both traditional scene-based storytelling and hybrid innovations of text, image, and fragmentation to present the speaker’s journey from as many perspectives as possible.

The literary influences of ORIGIN STORY include Rivka …

Apparent Magnitude, Diana Anaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

APPARENT MAGNITUDE is a collection of lyric essays that explores family relationships, the Cuban-American immigrant experience, coming-of-age, and sexual trauma through the dual lenses of science and myth. This collection uses experimental forms, playing with the page. The experiences of an immigrant Cuban family are recounted through extended metaphors of celestial bodies, fairy tales, fables, and myths.

The literary influences of APPARENT MAGNITUDE include Rebecca McClanahan’s lyric essay, “Interstellar,” as well as A SMALL PLACE by Jamaica Kincaid. McClanahan’s use of scientific language and the metaphor of celestial bodies informs the way this collection approaches autobiographical experience. Kincaid’s prose style …

Trying To Save The Family: A Memoir, Roberto J. Manzano

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

TRYING TO SAVE THE FAMILY: A MEMOIR uses incomplete and contradictory versions of single incidents and views of character that echo across time and place to assemble a narrative portrait of three generations. It looks at a family’s simultaneity of experience in Havana, leaving versus staying, and in Miami, adjusting versus failing to. The narrator employs interviews, photos, and family documents to investigate and interpret a complex inheritance. Like Joan Didion's Miami, this memoir focuses on history's patterns and repetitions. It starts in the fifties and ends in the present, as the narrator searches his family’s past to understand …

Ambient Light: Essays On Marriage, Motherhood, And Mental Health, Bonnie Losak

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

AMBIENT LIGHT: ESSAYS ON MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD, AND MENTAL

HEALTH is a collection of ten personal and lyric essays interspersed with poems

that speak to the subject or tone of the essay that follows. These essays examine

the narrator’s experiences as mother, wife, and daughter, and explore the manner

in which the different roles bleed into one another. The narrator’s impending

divorce and the events that coalesce around it shape these essays into a coherent

whole.

In the spirit of Brenda Miller’s lyric essays, the essays collected in AMBIENT

LIGHT: ESSAYS ON MARRIAGE, MOTHERHOOD, AND MENTAL HEALTH, use

rich, imagistic language …

Two Ways Of Burning A Cotton Field, David James Lindstrom

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD is an ethnographic memoir concerning the narrator’s experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, South America. The plot is structured around a moral crisis in his rural Paraguayan village. The narrator’s neighbor, a man in his late twenties, threatened to kill his partner and her two children. The Paraguayan police were made aware of the situation but did nothing. Peace Corps management also instructed the narrator to do nothing.

In TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD, this moral crisis is explored within the contexts of post-colonial power structures, including economic and …

Offshore, Laurel Nakanishi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OFFSHORE is a collection of lyric essays that examines the intersections between human cultures and the natural world. The essays inspect issues of identity and belonging in different geographic, cultural, and political landscapes. Part one of the book centers on the cultural and natural landscapes of Hawaii and Japan. Part two explores interpersonal relationships in Montana. And part three focuses on social justice issues in Nicaragua and Florida. Each of the essays in this collection balances intellectual exploration with personal narrative and poetic description, allowing the essays to be simultaneously concept-driven while maintaining lyric force.

The String Of 10,000 Firecrackers, Jan M. Becker

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

THE STRING OF 10,000 FIRECRACKERS

by

Jan Becker

Florida International University, 2017

Miami, Florida

Professor Les Standiford, Major Professor

THE STRING OF 10,000 FIRECRACKERS is a collection of personal essays that examines the narrator’s upbringing as a Marine Corps brat, and her experience immigrating into civilian society in the United States after a childhood segregated behind barbed-wire on military bases.

The collection begins with the title essay, when the narrator, at nine years-of-age, tosses an ignited string of 10,000 firecrackers at her stepfather, a decorated Vietnam veteran, triggering post-traumatic flashback, and a reflection on the author’s …

Hunger: Essays, Monica I. Restrepo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

HUNGER: ESSAYS is a collection of lyric essays that present the coming-of-age story of a young woman growing up in a Panamanian family where identity is defined by patriarchal notions of femininity (e.g., physical appearances) and economically-oriented career aspirations. In an attempt to fit into this family rather than explore her difference, the narrator undergoes psychological trauma that results in anorexia during her young adulthood. As she works towards healing, the narrator grapples with Western dichotomies of body and mind in an effort to become a more integrated self.

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 …

The Road From Emmaus, Elizabeth Buro

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

THE ROAD FROM EMMAUS is a collection of 20 personal and lyric essays that explores the narrator’s role as mother and daughter through a close look at significant life events, including her parents’ divorce, a high-risk pregnancy, the death of her father, talking to her daughter for the first time about sex, and accompanying her daughter to the DMV for a learner’s permit. Through examining familial roles and relationships, the narrator’s longing for home emerges as a unifying theme.

The essays in THE ROAD FROM EMMAUS vary in style and tone, from light and funny to serious and probing. The …

Dear Little Me: A Response To My Former Self, Carly Steele

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DEAR LITTLE ME: A RESPONSE TO MY FORMER SELF is a 180-page memoir in which the adult self at age twenty-three responds to the diary entries and writings of the younger version of herself. The original diary entries, which were written from 2001 to 2004, feature the typical troubles of a middle school girl: crushes, cliques, and puberty. However, the diary entries also explore darker events such as September 11, divorce, bullying, and self-image issues. When the adult “me” re-read these diaries, I felt a strong desire to respond to my former self, offering her advice and encouragement, both serious …

Keep The Doors Open, Lauren C. Rivera

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My purpose in writing this collection of lyric essays is to examine my evolution during one decade, from age 19 to 29. Essential questions have guided me: What stimulated change? What formed my decisions? What predisposed me to my relationship with my partner? Why did I want to have a child? What kind of relationship do I have with my son? How did my relationship with my partner evolve? Why did we decide to leave Miami? Hopefully, I have given the reader a glimpse into my movement from self-centeredness to motherhood, from aloof adolescent to committed partner, from timid daughter …

Jack's Bight : Solace Of An Open Place, Hamish Winthrop Ziegler

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jack's Bight: Solace of an Open Place is a non-fiction book; partly a story of place, as well as the spirit of the people I lived with for seven years aboard a houseboat in a floating community called the Anchorage, off Miami. It starts with how I came to the Anchorage and my first months aboard with my girlfriend. Character portraits follow, with a shrimping trip and a historical account of Jack's Bight. This is followed by the first of several chapters on our political struggle with Miami city government. Subsequent chapters describe living aboard in nature, the life of …