Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Research Paper

First Advisor

Wendy Furman-Adams

Abstract

As a young girl, I would curl up next to my mother on the couch each night and listen to her read aloud. With my head– still wet and smelling of shampoo from my evening bath– leaning on her forearm and my bare feet tucked up under my nightgown, i could feel the vibrations of her voice traveling from my body. Closing my eyes, I let her words transport me to prairies where women’s calico skirts swirl with slender stalks of grass in wild bursts of wind, to mossy dungeons haunted by ancient curses, and into the earthen burrows of talking animals. It was during those evenings that I learned to allow stories to flow through my like my own pulsating blood. As I grew older, I sought out books of my own. I would sit cross-legged on my bed with a book splayed across my lap and attempt to finish my own narrative outline of overflowing mass of thoughts, memories, and events. I discovered then that stories help us understand who we are in the world. Even when they are fictionalized or fragmented into poems, stories give us roots into the vast mysterious beauty that we sense is just beyond our everyday perception. This project, which I describe as a written self-portrait in collage, is a collection of autobiographical short stories, poems, and vignette. Within these writings are the moments that I have tried to describe over and over again because my essential self is captured somewhere within them. I know that I will spend the rest of my life telling and retelling these moments. Although it marks the end of my undergraduate career, this project is only the beginning of a lifetime of self-discovery.

Comments

WSP Major: The Role of Narrative in Societies

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