The Law of Historical Memory

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http://hdl.handle.net/11603/3766
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Author/Creator
Date
2017-01
Type of Work
148 p.
Text
manuscripts
Program
MFA in Creative Nonfiction
Rights
This work is restricted for 10 years from the date listed above. No access will be permitted until the embargo has expired. Once the embargo expires the work is available only on Goucher College's campus.
Subjects
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
Hodgkins Lymphoma
Cancer
Suicide
Family Dysfunction
Repressed Memories
Sexual Assault
Journals
Healing
Cuban-Americans
Immigrant families
Memoir
Creative nonfiction -- Theses.
Abstract
Experimenting with various shifts of narrative address, The Law of Historical Memory is a memoir in four parts that examines the fragmentation of my selfhood and my family relationships. I reflect upon the past through the lens of my post-cancer period of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as, during that period, the new, healthier relationship I had developed with my body incurred a greater sense of its communicative abilities. I discovered that my body held memories I could not see but feared greatly—so much so that I feared dying more after cancer. When I discovered that my adolescent journals revealed repressed experiences, every false conception I had of myself and of my family was shattered. Ultimately, by uncovering the truth, I healed as an integrated self. This thesis represents excerpts from Part 3: The Kitchen Sink and Part 4: The Pact of Forgetting.