Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Matthew Roth

Abstract

Being a woman who writes about life then, whatever that might mean, is what this project is about, because in that way this male seeing of the world is not silenced but rather transformed by the other side of a conversation that has always been one-sided. I read that and thought, wow, I’m doing something political, something revolutionary, something that’s part of a bigger legacy of women completely revolutionizing traditional discourse!But as I look over the stories I’ve written, I find something very different. I find something intensely personal, even private, in my own relation to gender. I thought I hardly noticed my relationship to femininity, but as I wrote, I uncovered by own deepest fear of my inadequacy of even being part of this gender as well as my most fragile hopes about being loved despite these fears that have so long laid submerged in my Hemingway-Joyce-Melville soaked brain. I found a kind of child-like uncertainty that we can all relate to about whether or not we are capable to fulfill the roles that may or may not be set before us as well as a simple yearning for love, no matter what.

In addition to my personal revelations, I also discovered that, as a writer, who I read matters. The reading lists I create for myself relate to justice – who do I include? Who do I exclude? How does that relate to the injustices perpetuated in the culture I live in at large? I discovered that being a writer and a reader relates deeply to the questions of our time – a lesson I will carry with me as I leave college and must design my own private learning.

Comments

This paper is provided open access to promote scholarship and is intended for personal study and not-for-profit educational use.

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