WHAT I REMEMBER: A Collection of Stories & Portions from a Novel
Date
2015
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MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
“What I Remember,” a collection of short stories and portions from a novel, explores memory and the decisions one makes when coming to a crossroad. It’s a final look back before moving forward. It serves, also, as a mirror into the mind of various women when faced with the vagaries of life and the way in which the past acts as a guidepost and the impetus for change or lack thereof. While there are secondary and tertiary characters woven throughout, as appropriate, the focus of the stories is the psyche of the woman with respect to the things that are thought, even obsessed over, but rarely spoken of or discussed.
Death, desertion, and divorce: these are the ways in which we all leave a relationship. This collection reflects the argument that the decisions a woman makes with her mind in regard to her heart and body are those that are most often made in fear of the loss of control in some other aspect of her life, that her personal identity, even more so than her social identity, is tied to her relationship to the men in her life. The only decision that is truly hers in a relationship, and which thus forms that identity, is whether a woman chooses to remain or leave it.
Because this is a cross-cultural decision, the women in these stories are from a variety of backgrounds and at various stages in their lives. However, these stories are all in some way tied to the Tampa Bay area as it supplies a diverse demographic of characters from which to draw, provides a common backdrop for the subject as an ‘everyman,’ and because with all its richness of history and culture, Tampa Bay remains woefully underrepresented in literature.
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Keywords
Relationships, Tampa Bay (Fla.), Women