| Mad Girl's Love Song is a collection of seven personal essays that explores the connections between the people and social climate of particular places. Crafting the story of my life from the mid-1980s through 2014, these essays will illuminate the experience of living, learning, and working in various towns in North America and Western Europe. Time and place emerge as crucial scaffolding for this personal narrative as a whole.;Using place as a main character in each essay, I will show how geography is a physical and emotional factor in personal development. Linear time will be explored as the vehicle for physical changes, while non-linear time will be explored as the vehicle for psychological and emotional changes. Using the works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Hilton Als, and Titus Kaphar as models for how to build narratives within linear and non-linear timeframes, the essay collection will attempt to expose how the following themes are factors of personal development that operate outside of time: depression; addiction; gender identity; sexuality; loss; faith/hope/magical thinking; parenting and genetics. While each of these elements shapes the individual identity of every human being, whether or not an individual is able to adjust to adulthood is influenced by the chronotopes of his or her unique life. It is my hope that crafting my personal narrative in an artistic way will be useful and interesting to readers. |
