MFA 2014
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Browsing MFA 2014 by Subject "Abuse"
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Item MY MOTHER WHO TEACHES DANCE: Selections from a Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-06-19) Holmes, ConnorMy Mother Who Teaches Dance is a novel of self-discovery, told alternately from the perspectives of Alby Melvin, a South Florida crime reporter, and Mariposa Fernández-Pérez, a Cuban ex-pat living in Miami with her parents Mateo and Lucia. Some sections are told from the perspectives of supporting characters, though Alby and Mariposa drive the story. Their lives intertwine when Alby goes to the funeral of his estranged father, held by Mateo, whom Alby’s father had saved in a trucking accident. Alby must reconcile his father’s abandonment and his mother’s late-stage Huntington’s Disease, and Mariposa must traverse her tumultuous past growing up in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Both struggle to understand Alby’s father, Franklin Melvin, who passed through their lives so fleetingly. The novel explores various themes centered on homelessness, foreignness, fatherhood, abuse, abandonment, and reconciliation. The novel is written in a traditional style but with sections utilizing syntax or formatting in order to accentuate the narrative material, including alternating POVs, stream-of-consciousness, and the use of subtitles or numerical lists. Ultimately these techniques should serve Alby and Mariposa’s story by palpably exorcising the traumas of their pasts and helping forge a new conversation between them.Item THINGS I WASN’T SUPPOSED TO SAY: A Mosaic Memoir(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2013-12-31) Wanser, Mary M.This creative thesis project is a collection of personal essays that constitute a memoir manuscript. Intermingled among traditional essay forms in this collection are experimental layouts, including several fragmented pieces made of abbreviated snapshots in time that when pieced together form a larger picture. There is a braided piece that entwines two different stories set in two different time frames, an alphabetical list, and even a personal letter. Several relevant photos are scattered throughout the book making this work a true mosaic. Each chapter has a confessional quality, and the self-revelation merges into a didactic tone in some of the later chapters. Beneath the overarching themes of secrets and taboos are instances of abandonment, abuse, and death by various means. The bulk of the content is bleak, but reasons for hope abound in the end. The uniqueness of this memoir lies in the author’s ability to weave seamlessly in and out of time with the use of historic present tense verbs alongside past tenses. This effect of drawing a reader into scenes that occurred distant in time is the single most fascinating lesson the writer carries away with her from The University of Tampa’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program.