Date of Award

5-2023

Degree Type

Creative Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

English

Committee Chair(s)

Jennifer Sinor

Committee

Jennifer Sinor

Committee

Michael Sowder

Committee

Christine Cooper-Rompato

Abstract

This collection of essays examines how I house the grief for the losses of my religion and my grandfather. My first essay, “Body of Feathers,” looks at my body as a house of shame and how I transformed my body into something that could be mine instead. It explores a series of moments from my life where I felt disconnected from my body, usually because of rules or expectations set by someone other than me. In the essay, I move from feeling like I had no control of my body, to taking back control and experiencing my body as mine for the first time. The second essay, “Obituary,” houses the grandfather I knew and loved but shares space with the grandfather I didn’t know, and who didn’t know me. I center most of my essay in the final few moments with my grandfather before he died and weave memories of him and drafts of the obituary I didn’t write for him at the time. I complicate truths that I chose to ignore and write about the truths I only learned after he was gone. It is ultimately a eulogy for his life and a eulogy for the things I never got to say to my grandfather.

Included in

Nonfiction Commons

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