Nonfiction Commons^™

Latchkey: A Memoir In Essays, Nicole C. Pendleton

Honors Undergraduate Theses

"Latchkey: A Memoir in Essays" is an essay collection that follows the narrator through her childhood as it relates to being raised a latchkey kid in the 1980s. The lack of published academic studies that follow children through their experience as latchkey kids and into adulthood leaves personal exploration as the primary means through which a child, specifically a young girl, can seek understanding as to how her view of the world develops. Each of the five essays explores issues of autonomy, self-efficacy, sexuality, addiction, and familial bonds. It is through her reflection of specific events – the loss of …

We're Having A Moment, Sophia Pelosi

Honors Theses

Hi.

Thank you for being here, for reading this. Given that you’re here, I assume that you are a close friend, or a thesis advisor, or a relative, or maybe some nosy peer who just happened upon it, and found themselves curious. No judgement. I get it. I’d probably do the same to you, if it were your thesis, your heart, your soul, your memories on the page.

I wrote this because I wanted to. I wrote this because I knew it would be special for me, to get to unabashedly care about my writing and want to make it …

Baby Fat -- A Legacy, Brandi M. Gard

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Affectionately Max, Kayla Riemensperger

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

A Sliver Of Light, Melissa Browning

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

A Town Slowly Burned: Life And Death In A Small Louisiana Town, Victoria C. Bush

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When Tori Bush’s father died of chemical causes related to Agent Orange, she found herself obsessed with tracing dioxins, one of the main ingredient of Agent Orange in other American communities. She began to visit and interview residents of Mossville, Louisiana, a small town on the border of Texas, which has fourteen petrochemical facilities surrounding the town. The residents also had been exposed to dioxins. Grief and anger connected Tori to this story, but it is far larger—is the right to a healthy natural environment a part of our American citizenship?

From Start To Finish, Anjali Glenn

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Margie, Savannah Wilcek

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Paper Memories: A Visual Memoir, Stephanie Trinidad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Adolescence can be considered one of the hardest times in any person's life. Growing up, we are confronted with two very different possibilities of how our lives will turn out. One is the flawless version that is continuously on display in television series and movies. The other is the real-world version where a person is questioned and ridiculed for everything they’ve done. News headlines about students who, under pressure from their peers, take their own lives are a common occurrence. The focus of many of these headlines is on the bullies and on whether prosecution is possible for the crime …

The Letters, Alicia Defonzo

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

“You know, your grandmother only wrote me once during the war?” he says, sipping his scotch, staring out at the Chesapeake Bay which he can no longer see. I look at him with her eyes. It was the first I heard of it. He wouldn’t lie to me, but I wonder how this could be true.

Maybe She Found Me In A Poem, Robin Gow

English and Creative Writing Honors Papers

Maybe She Found Me in a Poem explores my own family relationship and family stories through a variety of poetic forms, persona poetry, and prose pieces centered on an imagined relationship with my grandmother who died before I was born. The collection asks, “How much are our family stories our own?” and “Can we create memory?” Themes of haunting, ghosts, queerness, shared memory, death, and burial are carried throughout the collection and brought forward in their respective sections. Images are placed throughout as part of the collection to amplify the “haunting” power of the text.

The Way We Dream Now: History, Theory, And Lgbtq Memoir In America, Megan Paslawski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines American memoirs written after 2000 by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors with an eye to how the recent institutionalization of queer theory and the open production of LGBTQ histories affect these writers’ conceptions of their lives, aspirations, and cultures. I argue that these memoirs, sometimes consciously, find themselves struggling with what are also competing ideas within queer theory about the queerness of futurity even as they turn to the past of queer/trans literature and history to bolster their senses of possible identities and communities. This often has the effect of positioning contemporary LGBTQ writers as …

Oj, David Aldridge

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

On his first leave from Vietnam, a soldier visits his brother, an All-American placekicker for the USC Trojans before their 1967 game with Notre Dame, and meets OJ Simpson.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so …

The Naked, Running, Screaming Girl, Norman Miller

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

Unable to sleep, an old veteran of Vietnam spends his time and money in a bar, where he meets the perfect person to listen to him.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and …

Aftermath, David Aldridge

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

On his first day in the Vietnamese bush, a soldier takes upon himself to recover the body of a fallen comrade.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Quang Tri Rain, Larry Meier

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A Vietnam vet waits for another soldier in his therapy group to open up.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Don't Take 'No' For An Answer, Beth Liechti

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

Two veterans, an retired Army officer and a World War II Women's Army Corp veteran. find common ground in the bonds of shared military service.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience …

Collateral Damage, Pat Clark

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A quick glimpse by a combat LT of his first firefight in Vietnam.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Greater Love, Pat Clark

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

When a grenade falls into the midst of this LT’s squad in Vietnam, one soldier leaps to action.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Tripped Up, Emma Mazurek

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

A Writing Journey To Greatness: Leaving My Second-Rate Life Behind, John Paul Canfield

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a memoir project that focuses on a time period of the author’s life between the ages of 13 to 24. The narrative is composed of several stories focused around the author’s abusive father, and its impact on the author as a child. In addition to presenting the memoir, the project also analyzes memoir as a form, arguing that writing of this nature has healing capabilities. It explores how the writing process can become complicated by reliance on memory and re-exposure to traumatic events. The thesis draws on work from Mary Karr, Sondra Perl & Mimi Schwartz, George …

Open Doors, Meagan R. Baccinelli

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This memoir is about community, family and race relations as the author experiences them in New Jersey, where she grew up, at University of Maryland, where she went to college, in Washington, D.C., during Barack Obama’s presidency, and in New Orleans, where she lands in her late twenties. It is meant to shed light on the possibilities and beauty to be found in diverse, close-knit communities, where people share in each other’s joys and sorrows. It also speaks to the importance of romantic partnerships in which both people share the same values, and explore and grow together.

Gifts Of Character: A Father's Love Letter From His Hearing And Deaf Childhood, B. Mutisya Nzyuko

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

Using the power of the written word in a kind, loving, and inspirational manner, the author shares his childhood journey in personal essays to his children, from which they can draw inspiration, find instruction, get answers to some of their questions about life, and map their own destinies with a better understanding of their father’s struggles and victories. As a story from a specific period of the author’s life, Gifts of Character is a memoir, a story from a life, unlike an autobiography, which is the story of a life. The author recalls events and conversations, not verbatim, but from …

Eight Pieces Of Pie., Maggie E. Cassaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a studio artist and a creative writer, I contemplated what would happen if I utilized the principles of fine art in the application of the written word. If I became the subject of the written word, could I formulate the telling of my story in such a way that a reader could find themselves sculpted within its pages? Eight Pieces of Pie tells my story, that as a single woman at the age of forty-three years, eight months and six days, I discovered I was unavailable. I delved back to my first memories to discover how my emotional unavailability …

Retellings : A Collection Of Nonfiction Essays., Jennifer Kiefer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of nonfiction essays, extending both into the realms of journalism as well as into more traditional creative nonfiction essays. While each piece is based in true stories, each piece has its own style. As such, this collection is an exploration of different forms of and takes on the nonfiction essay. It is divided into four chapters, one for each essay. The first half encompasses journalistic pieces previously published in Louisville Magazine, one in the August 2016 issue and one in the February 2017 issue. The first piece is a literal retelling of three medical stories, …

Spruce Mountain Inn, Catherine Hensley

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Stars And Bars, David Kobe

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Café Ægir, Susie Schmank

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Decidedly Uncertain, Sophia I. Varosy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My capstone project is meant to reflect the ideas I’ve been exposed to and the ways in which they have, as a consequence, influenced my life; the ways, I suppose, I can apply them. Over the course, or courses (literally), of my time spent at The CUNY Graduate Center, I felt (mostly) enthusiastic about the ideas and philosophies I was growing to at-least-marginally understand. However, as time passed I became increasingly more unsettled about my position as an “academic.” In other words, I found that I was moved and motivated to increase my understanding of things, but never did I …

France In June, Alicia Defonzo

English Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

Motion sickness bothered me since childhood, though Dad never believed me—thought I was faking for attention. Fits of sweat, the swaying, my nervous stomach would bloat and burn like the aftermath of a warm glass of expired milk. I’d start burping, pleading to my dad to crack a window, if I could only breathe. But he always kept them locked, ever the dictator. One day after school, it was too late, and projectile vomit splattered all over the leather interior of his light blue 1962 Buick Riviera. He occasionally opened the window an inch for me thereafter.