Skin Baby is about the inevitability of decline and decay—what happens when we turn away from it, and what happens when we're forced to confront it head on. The essays in this collection focus on navigating a parent's devastating diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and the struggle to control its accompanying chaos. The collection interrogates identity, addiction, generational mental illness, and parent-child relationships. In "Home for the Holidays," illness is an invisible foe that shatters expectations. "Prologue to Revelations" and "This Too Shall Pass" consider rampant escapism and anesthetization. "The Druggist's Daughter" explores preconceived notions of family dynamic. Other essays focus on discoveries about inherited traits both physical and mental ("Things Unattended"), desperation for metaphysical and spiritual understanding ("Bruja," "Peripheries") and accepting the inescapable ("Skin Baby," "What is Owed," "Next Year in Jerusalem"). Parkinson's disease slowly robs people of their faculties as it progresses. Death ultimately occurs, but not before a long period of watching and waiting. Skin Baby explores what that watching and waiting looks like for one family.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2020-1095 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Creators | Macalintal, Erica |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- |
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