SILENT CHAINS
Date
2015
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MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
When Patricia died, I inherited her intellectual property: poetry, short stories, brown and brittle photographs, letters, and a notebook.
I knew that my mother was adopted, and that her mother gave her away when she was eight. I knew she was raised on a farm in Gainesville, Florida. But I didn’t know the events that took place there, events in which she, in her entire 73 years, could never speak of. When she was twenty years old, she wrote them down, along with accounts of her life before being abandoned, with family that she kept secret, in a brown English II notebook. I inherited that notebook.
In this thesis, I embark on a journey of research and discovery, using yesterday’s documents and today’s technology. I become obsessed in finding my mother’s birth family; also mine. I learn that abandonment continues. Can the chains be broken? This thesis is only the first half of my book, which intertwines Patricia’s memoirs with my discoveries, my own memories, and my understanding of my grandmother’s true intentions. Why did she do it?
In 2013, I lost the woman who raised me. Now, I feel like I didn’t really know my mother at all, and in this book I search through piece after piece of a puzzle to find her.
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Keywords
Nonfiction, Mother, Grief, Adoption