Date of Award

Spring 2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

Creative Writing

Committee Director

Tim Seibles

Committee Member

Luisa Igloria

Committee Member

Brian Silberman

Call Number for Print

Special Collections; LD4331.E64 C385 2003

Abstract

Outside Chicago is a manuscript based on my recollections of my childhood community of Burnham, Illinois. In the process of writing this manuscript it occurred to me that I have always tried to separate myself from any association with that community. When I left for college and then graduate school, I was ashamed of where I came from, but could not rid myself of the mentality or ethics the community gave me. The process of writing this manuscript has been an attempt (at some times unwilling) to claim a part of Burnham as mine. I never considered myself to have a claim to Burnham, it always seemed to me that others had the real claim to the village. In writing, I embraced the community from a distance. I accepted that the community, particularly the people of that community, had something worthwhile to explore, even if the manner in which it is said is crass or offensive (though many of the personas I use are not crass or offensive, but grasping for any way to express themselves). In studying my personas, I discovered that a large part of who I've become is grounded in the Burnham's influence and how I perceived the people of Burnham. It was the my attempts to claim or reclaim the influence of Burnham on myself that this manuscript embraces.

Divided into three sections, the manuscript follows my path away from and then towards Burnham. The first section, A Community Apart, are poems that expose mine or my personas' desires or acceptance that they are outside the community of the poems. The second section, Away From Home, continues the separation but find escape from the reality of their lives or (in my case) in an actual moving away. The final section, Reaching Back, reflects my desires to reach back to Burnham to rediscover its influence and claim a part of it by accepting the community as an influential part of myself.

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DOI

10.25777/yvn9-5k95

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