Ghetto Medic: A Father in the ’Hood, a biographical memoir, examines Baltimore City through the experiences of my father, Bill Hennick, a white paramedic who worked in Baltimore City for over thirty years, beginning his career at the height of the civil rights movement. Numerous stories have been written about African Americans living in slums, struggling to survive, but few are told from the point of view of a white man who endured the traumas of the ghetto while trying to assist them. The Major Work explores what motivated Bill Hennick to risk his life in caring for the poorest of the poor in a city with one of the world’s highest crime rates. What did he think as he witnessed the devastation of Baltimore as upwardly mobile whites and blacks abandoned the ‘wasteland’ and headed for the suburbs? Why did he remain with the underdogs? How did he learn about ghetto culture? How did he win the trust of people in the community who were otherwise suspicious of Caucasians? How did the environment affect him and how did he cope with tragedy? The Major Work also considers whether Bill Hennick survived unscathed. In representing his encounters with an underclass in Baltimore, Ghetto Medic offers a microcosm of race relations and poverty in the United States. It raises questions about the development of the African American ghetto while considering the problem of racial stereotypes, exploring historical influences and offering insight into the chasm that still exists between black and white people. While Bill Hennick bandaged gunshot wounds, gave mouth to mouth resuscitation and assisted in birthing the babies of people who were ignored by the wider community, he tried all the while to provide a stable life for his family, sheltering us from the dangers of his job with his sense of humour. His life as a ghetto medic stands in stark contrast to suburban family life. He began his career wanting to make a difference. But did the ghetto change him? In my exegesis accompanying Ghetto Medic, I have tried to demonstrate how creative nonfiction can be used as a powerful medium in initiating social change and building a bridge between races. The genre liberated me from the constraints of traditional nonfiction while allowing me to preserve factual and historical integrity in the overall work. Because I was attempting to tell someone else’s story from his point of view, it became necessary and inevitable to understand my responsibilities, roles and rights as a creative nonfiction writer. The exegesis considers the evolution of Ghetto Medic from a dictated autobiography, based on a series of transcribed interviews interspersed with Baltimore’s history, to a ‘biographical memoir’, including my personal recollections of my father. In this process I became both listener and storyteller. My exegesis describes my experimentation with different points of view, analyses the collaborative process between subject and author and considers the relationship between assumed objectivity and ‘truth’. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2008
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/280337 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Hennick, Rachel |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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