Date of Award
5-1-2024
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
English
First Advisor
Joseph, Allison
Second Advisor
Jordan, Judy
Abstract
My thesis is a microscope on all the things that have contained me or had some proximity to me throughout my life. Some major things of that list being: my own body, i.e. skin (color, and condition [eczema]), being socially perceived as a woman while existing as a trans (nonbinary) person, Major Depressive Disorder, General Anxiety, my childhood home in St Louis, MO, growing up in the Catholic Church, and my father’s alcoholism/ abuse. Some of these themes are more prevalent than others, but it is my goal for my first poetry collection (of which this thesis will make a great sum of) to cover these themes at length. The medium I am exploring these themes through is primarily memory poems. This writing endeavor has been an experiment in vulnerability for me. As someone who has engaged with therapy the past ten years, I have already dissected a lot of these memories/this trauma, but it was important for my healing process to write them in the best way I know how: Poetry. I have encapsulated these feelings in a “before” and “after” sense, thus, the three sections. These three sections encapsulate childhood, adolescence, and the “now”.
Access
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