Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
Program/Concentration
Creative Writing
Committee Director
Marianne Chan
Committee Member
Remica Bingham-Risher
Committee Member
Luisa A. Igloria
Committee Member
Molly McCully Brown
Abstract
This Changes Everything is a bildungsroman of motherhood, explored as a memoir-in-essays. The collection focuses on the universal rites of passage each parent experiences, and the unique way these shared milestones – the sticker shock that comes when realizing American childcare is unaffordable, the first time you lose a child, the first time your child is sick and you cannot heal them, the last time your last baby sleeps in a crib – shaped my own life.
Motherhood as a claimed identity is an organizing principle of the collection, and the essays move chronologically through my life as a newly pregnant woman to a young mother of two. Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born, and Rachel Cusk’s classic A Life’s Work are foundational texts for what I hope to achieve, and I am continually inspired by the way writers Camille T. Dungy, Louise Erdrich and Kate Baer render the intricacies and complexities and joy of motherhood on the page
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
DOI
10.25777/m6qx-4d14
ISBN
9798382770789
Recommended Citation
Lewis, Kate.
"This Changes Everything: A Memoir in Essays"
(2024). Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Thesis, English, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/m6qx-4d14
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_etds/189