Hameline, Cassia Leigh. "Stay for the Heron: Essays." Doctor of Philosophy (English), May 2023, 146 pp., works cited, 27 titles.
Stay for the Heron: Essays is an essay collection that explores truth, perception, and loss as it follows the writer's movement across landscapes that speak to a past she had, for so long, tried to run from. The essays in this collection seek to understand how we can write about difficult topics like abandonment, infidelity, and acts of self-destruction: do we get close to them? do we create distance? at what range are we able to relive the moments that caused us pain, or anger, or passion, or love and present them in written form for others to see? The collection challenges the narrative nonfiction form in preference for a more fluid, lyric, and hybrid genre that more accurately presents the material—at times fuzzy, difficult, confusing—at hand. Through its literary experimentations, such as fragmentation, lyricism, shifting points of view, and photography, the works here deconstruct what we consider "traditional" in the Essay genre and, instead, supports a shift towards a more contemporary tradition. The essays in Stay for the Heron explore the persona's geographical movement, paying close attention to the bodies of water she seeks out everywhere she goes, to find deeper meaning in the innate and earthly pulls we feel throughout life. From the sand-covered child watching her brother gut fish in awe, to the confused then sad then bitter teenager abandoned by her father, to the young woman whose lover's betrayals prompted her own self-destruction, and ultimately, to the woman who sought solitude for years before realizing she needed to come home; these essays interrogate perception, memory, and the concept that no one's truth is quite the same as another's. Despite their differences, though, there is space for them all.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc2137611 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Hameline, Cassia |
| Contributors | Talbot, Jill, Dubrow, Jehanne, Marks, Corey, Perry, Sarah |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Hameline, Cassia, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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