Little Wonders: A Memoir in Four Parts

Abstract

My creative thesis, Little Wonders: A Memoir in Four Parts, is a manuscript of literary nonfiction. I reflect on the past with respect to marriage and motherhood in the lives of my grandmother, my mother, myself, as well as on the experiences of my two sons. I explore memories in order to uncover the significance of being able to remember them. This memoir reflects on my decision to make a new life for myself and my sons alone, a conclusion I consider against the life choices of my mother and grandmother, thereby shedding light on the intergenerational transmission of gendered expectations on marriage and on divorce for the women in my family. In exploring this process of negotiating loss and subsequent rebuilding, I examine how creative expression can be both an outlet from and a response to these stresses in our lives and I weigh the question of what is important to keep, leading me towards a consideration of the objects that symbolize and resonate with the past. I have been influenced by memoirists Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Haven Kimmel, and Alice Walker, concerning their explorations of memory, honesty, and seemingly small actions. Memoir theorists have informed my writing: Patricia Hampl, Vladimir Nabokov, Ben Yagoda, and Philip Lopate. These experts have educated me on the nature of creative nonfiction writing: Hampl’s claim that we carry only images of value, so that from revision and reflection—Nabokov’s process of “caress[ing] the detail”— significance and meaning from memory are revealed; Yagoda’s consideration of the imprecision of memory; and Lopate’s instruction to question why it is we want to write about others. In my critical introduction, I engage with work by theorists D. W. Winnicott and Jo Malin. The theoretical understandings of Winnicott’s transitional object are considered, allowing me to explore the power of our objects and their space made internally available to us from these early associations. Malin’s ideas on embedded maternal narratives allow for new subjectivities for the women in my family, myself, and my sons, creating a dialogue within the memoir, validating all of our experiences, born out of their narratives and my own.