This novel dissertation deals with a young girl, Rayann Wood, on the verge of adolescence, growing up in rural north Florida in the mid 1960s. She must face a violent family life--an abusive father and a manic depressive (possibly schizophrenic) mother, and a racist culture, in which she, too is part of a minority culture as she is part Seminole Indian. / She forms a friendship with the only girl her age in the area, Cookie Johnson, who happens to be black, and lives with her "aunt" Miss Mamie, who also works as the maid in the white girl's household. Cookie's mother has run away and her father is in prison for manslaughter. / Cookie dreams of running away to Chicago and becoming a singer while Rayann dreams of killing her father. She gets visions from her great grandmother Polly who lives on the Brighton Reservation in south Florida. / The girls must hide their forbidden friendship. Together they recreate themselves by their friendship. They share a "hideout" that they build in the woods between their two houses. / They make a friendship by playing games, dreaming of futures, arguing about race and culture clashes, singing and dancing together, and occasionally horseback riding in the woods. Even as they are becoming closer friends, the backdrop against which their friendship exists is a violent southern apartheid which, in part, will separate them, because they accidentally set the Wood kitchen on fire. / The story, told in short lyrical vignettes, uses magical realism similar to minority writers such as Cristina Garcia (Dreaming in Cuban), Sandra Cisneros' (The House on Mango Street), N. Scott Momaday's (The Ancient Child), and others. / It carries also with it the southern traditions of "the land," insanity, corruption, family, racism, cultural oppression, the idea of woman. It is written in a "dialect" which includes idiosyncratic vocabulary, expressions and syntax. / The novel reflects my research in graduate studies, and my heritage. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-08, Section: A, page: 2394. / Major Professor: Sheila Ortiz Taylor. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77210 |
| Contributors | Ryals, Mary Jane., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 174 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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