My dissertation is an inquiry into issues of life-writing, narrative, and, in particular, into the genre of memoir, and into the theory, complexities and strategies of memoir as a particular space within the larger genre of autobiographical writing. Writing a personal narrative and then examining the process of that writing raises questions and challenges about such issues as ethics, identity, experience, memory, subjectivity, storytelling, and the interpretation, meaning and place of stories within our current culture. This dissertation is a discursive, dialogic conversation between my process and my understanding as an active, practicing literary writer, and as a researcher inquiring into that process and into the knowledge and new awareness that can be generated by the process of inquiry into life writing, autobiography and memoir. It is also an autoethnographic and experiential inquiry in which I explore my own experience from the multiple positions of rural working class woman, single parent mother, political activist, writer and researcher. However, the pronoun “I” is also a position from which I can articulate some of the experiential, collaborative, and collusive positionality that has shaped my personal notion of selfhood. My research and writing is about (re)cognition, about memoir in particular, and narrative and storytelling as the construction and reconstruction of various texts and the various interpretations that can result from such an analytic and critical study of this process. Within this narrative, autobiographical and theoretical inquiry, my dissertation intends to add to new knowledge of autobiographical writing and its theoretical and ethical dimensions.

My dissertation is an inquiry into issues of life-writing, narrative, and, in particular, into the genre of memoir, and into the theory, complexities and strategies of memoir as a particular space within the larger genre of autobiographical writing. Writing a personal narrative and then examining the process of that writing raises questions and challenges about such issues as ethics, identity, experience, memory, subjectivity, storytelling, and the interpretation, meaning and place of stories within our current culture. This dissertation is a discursive, dialogic conversation between my process and my understanding as an active, practicing literary writer, and as a researcher inquiring into that process and into the knowledge and new awareness that can be generated by the process of inquiry into life writing, autobiography and memoir. It is also an autoethnographic and experiential inquiry in which I explore my own experience from the multiple positions of rural working class woman, single parent mother, political activist, writer and researcher. However, the pronoun I is also a position from which I can articulate some of the experiential, collaborative, and collusive positionality that has shaped my personal notion of selfhood. My research and writing is about (re)cognition, about memoir in particular, and narrative and storytelling as the construction and reconstruction of various texts and the various interpretations that can result from such an analytic and critical study of this process. Within this narrative, autobiographical and theoretical inquiry, my dissertation intends to add to new knowledge of autobiographical writing and its theoretical and ethical dimensions.

This creative thesis includes a critical introduction that discusses a brief history and definition of the creative nonfiction genre, the ethical dilemmas faced by the writer when telling a true story, and contextualizes my work within contemporary creative nonfiction. Locust Skin contains twenty-eight original pieces describing my experience adjusting to life as a single mother. Narrative segments alternate with short prose poems that add depth of feeling and a sense of wonder and beauty to contrast with the struggles voiced in the narrative. Through research and the study of works by authors such as Mary Karr, Terry Tempest Williams and Norma Cantú, I was able to establish a framework for the creative portion of the thesis. In writing the stories, I discovered the difficulty in negotiating an effective balance between telling a true story while maintaining privacy for the real people included in the narrative. Objectivity, avoiding sentimentality, and writing about myself without producing an overly self-absorbed collection was also a struggle. Overall, the collection contains short prose pieces that strive to reflect the precise poetic prose of Karr's The Liar's Club, while combining human suffering with detailed descriptions of nature illustrated by Williams' Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place in an unconventional form reminiscent of Norma Cantú's Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera.

Until the Pale Daybreak: Essays from the Periphery is a collection of personal essays, in the form of a commonplace book, primarily exploring my experiences and memories of grief. These emotions are accompanied by travel through cities in Europe, North America and Brazil, and while these are essays of loss - either a physical loss, such as that of a parent, or an emotional bereavement, for a place or time - the essays also touch on literature, film, religion, human nature, and melancholia. Throughout the collection I write from the periphery of my life, choosing how much to reveal textually, inviting the reader to gaze alongside me, and at me, but always from a distance. The pieces range from childhood experience through to adult reflections, and an acceptance of the cards life has dealt. Along the way I reflect on varied subjects and characters, from assisted suicide, to the French musical star Dalida, and from Quentin Crisp, to mountaineer Jonathan Conville. The intention of these parallel lives is to complement my own narrative and take a reader back to the fringes of my conversation. The writing in this collection is varied. Certainly some sections are very sad, an emotion that seems unavoidable when writing about bereavement, but there is also humour, poetry, and calmness. The pieces are conversations, often to myself, that I am allowing the reader to eavesdrop on, perhaps witnessing something of their own lives in the writing, and provoking moments of reflection.

Homesick is a memoir about growing up with a mentally ill immigrant mother in suburban Toronto. It is one family’s chronicle, a story of chaos, confusion and challenges in adversarial circumstances. The work is divided into three sections. Home is where the Heartache Lives deals with a childhood spent witnessing an acrimonious arranged marriage. You Can’t Go Home Again covers the twenty years the narrator spent living in British Columbia while attempting to maintain a distance from the immediate family. Homesick details the narrator’s return to Toronto. Themes of home, language and cultural identity are explored alongside the experience of what it means to witness a devastating disease like schizophrenia and what it feels like to endure a chronically ill family member.

The following is a collection of personal essays that re-create and reflect on select events that occurred in my life between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.

In Breathing through the Night, the author examines the moments of understanding and misunderstanding, the moments of fear, coping, and relief that occur during her husband’s deployment to Iraq and upon his return. The experiences of this military family serve as a magnifying lens through which the author explores means of coping and the role of communication in making meaning from memory, in shaping personal narratives within layers of story and history.

This collection of creative nonfiction encapsulates the author’s career as a burlesque performer in New Orleans. The goal of this thesis is to tell her story using the techniques of creative nonfiction – specifically, the memoir. This is not merely a story of her career – it is a piece about her relationships, the author conquering her fears, and how she rises up to meet her goals. Part I tells of how the author discovers this new world and how she finds her place in it. Part II is the author’s personal narrative of her revelation to her family. This story will introduce those who are unfamiliar with burlesque to a world of theatrics, sparkle, erotic subtexts, and this story needs the techniques of creative nonfiction to do it justice.

This collection of personal essays about incest, abuse, and depression explores the lasting effects of an invisible childhood. The essays follow the protagonist from the age of five to her early twenties. Her brother, at a young age, becomes sexually abusive of her and her sisters, and her parents fail to protect their daughters. The family is divided as the older girls strive to defend their little sisters, while their parents attempt to excuse their son. When her brother is finally sent away, the protagonist is left to salvage what remains of her relationships with her parents.

The untitled memoir focuses on a young woman with a troubling past and possibly bright future. Having a drug addict as a mother who was either abusive or absent causes tension in Tara’s life when she finds out she is pregnant with twins. Tara must learn how to be a mother without having a good example or someone to turn to for motherly advice. Interspersed between chapters from her childhood are vignettes that follow and track the pregnancy. The vignettes show the uneasiness and hopeful aspect of becoming a mother and the growth that Tara must go through herself in just 9 months from being a lonely child who had to see and deal with adult things way to young, to a woman ready to raise her own children.