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Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Masters Thesis (Campus-Only Access)

Department or Program Affiliation

English

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Winrock, Cori A.

Second Advisor

Orduña, José

Third Advisor

Warburton, Theresa

Abstract

Something Waking: An Origin Story is the first quarter of an origin story—a story that explores the effects of intergenerational trauma on relationships with family, friends, the self, and writing. It asks questions about identity and belonging, about how we embody echoes of endings and beginnings. Comprised of three personal timelines and a retold folktale, these four storylines are blown out of chronology into fragments, recreating the experience of memory, trauma, and imagination. Using the lyric mode to bend time and compress the “I” of the speaker and employing the essayistic mode to seek questions rather than a traditional arc interweaves with the folktale to create a sense of time larger and more resilient than my personal and familial trauma. The result is the opening section of an origin story that is more than a rupture—it is a story glimmering with possibilities of new futures. By disrupting the traditional form of women’s memoir, Something Waking reckons with how stories can be whole in their fragments and complexities. More than a memoir, more than an origin rooted in geological location, this work acknowledges my spiritual forming through stories I have been told and choose to tell.

Type

Text

Keywords

origin story, memoir, women, women's memoir, intergenerational trauma, essayistic, lyric, identity, belonging, fragments

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1523073976

Subject – LCSH

Generational trauma--Fiction; Families--Fiction; Intergenerational relations--Fiction; Interpersonal relations--Fiction; Identity (Philosophical concept)--Fiction; Belonging (Social psychology)

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

masters theses

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

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