"A Way to Salvage Brown Bananas" and Other Stories: A Collection of Short Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

Abstract

In I Could Tell You Stories, Patricia Hampl writes, ' ... writing, certainly, isn't wishing; it is witnessing. 11 In both fiction and nonfiction, the writer is a witness before anything else. In a collection of short nonfiction and fiction, there may be evident links between the material in both genres. My stories and essays merge through issues of identity and coping mechanisms, focusing on the effects of childhood trauma on family dynamics and personal relationships later in life. I trace memories of my parents' grief after my sister's death and my coping mechanisms and relationships with my older half sisters.

No one, other than immediate family and friends, would have known what we went through if we hadn't told them, and I am curious about the pain people hide throughout their lives and how secrets are kept, sometimes simply because we don't know what else to do with them.

Here, events and people from my life have inspired my short stories, and this fiction has served as springboards for exploring my life. Writing fiction opens my mind to possibilities that I have not yet completely explored through real experience, and then I discover that what I've written connects to real life events in unexpected ways. My goal is to be self-aware, an observer of my own life. When I see connections between events, emotions, and behaviors, I try to draw attention to the relationships between them so that the reader may become a witness to the events and the process of discovery with me.

Notes

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Thesis Completion

2005

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Leiby, Jeanne M.

Degree

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

English

Degree Program

English

Subjects

Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic; Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Sciences; Infants -- Death; Short stories

Format

Print

Identifier

DP0021901

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Document Type

Honors in the Major Thesis

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