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(1 - 9 of 9)
- Title
- The Natural Exile: A Study Of Twenty-First Century Cuban-American Narratives Focusing On The Elderly's Plight.
- Creator
-
Parson, Jasmine, Milanes, Cecilia, Nwakanma, Obi, Logan, Lisa, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Developed from the similarity between exile theory and age studies, the term (")exile(") is expanded to a natural form of exile because of the shocking temporal shift that reconstructs social interaction, familial dynamics, and the aging body. Using Heidegger's theoretical work Being in Time, Simon de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age, and Jean Am(&)#233;ry's On Aging as insight, this literary analysis captures how the elderly protagonists Goyo from Cristina Garc(&)#237;a's King of Cuba, M(&)#225...
Show moreDeveloped from the similarity between exile theory and age studies, the term (")exile(") is expanded to a natural form of exile because of the shocking temporal shift that reconstructs social interaction, familial dynamics, and the aging body. Using Heidegger's theoretical work Being in Time, Simon de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age, and Jean Am(&)#233;ry's On Aging as insight, this literary analysis captures how the elderly protagonists Goyo from Cristina Garc(&)#237;a's King of Cuba, M(&)#225;ximo from Ana Men(&)#233;ndez's (")In Cuba I was a German Shepherd,(") and Soledad from Cecilia Rodr(&)#237;guez Milan(&)#233;s's (")Abuela Marielita(") experience a natural exile among society, their family and within their own body. These areas express how the elderly's sense of displacement equates that of a political/geographical exile.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2019
- Identifier
- CFE0007701, ucf:52432
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007701
- Title
- "Exiled as the Ship Itself": Liminality and Transnational Identity in Malcolm Lowry's Ultramarine, Under the Volcano, and Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid.
- Creator
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Tricker, Spencer, Lillios, Anna, Nwakanma, Obi, Campbell, James, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
The themes of empire, nationality, and self-imposed exile constitute underexplored topics in critical discussions of modernist author Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957). Until recently, most academic studies have approached his work from biographical, mythological, and psychoanalytic perspectives. While a few studies have performed historical readings of his novels, such investigations tend, primarily, to focus on his engagement with western literary and theoretical movements of the early twentieth...
Show moreThe themes of empire, nationality, and self-imposed exile constitute underexplored topics in critical discussions of modernist author Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957). Until recently, most academic studies have approached his work from biographical, mythological, and psychoanalytic perspectives. While a few studies have performed historical readings of his novels, such investigations tend, primarily, to focus on his engagement with western literary and theoretical movements of the early twentieth century. Of the few studies that address the cross-cultural reach of his novels, most are limited to discussions of Mexican history and traditions, thus prioritizing a specific geographical region when they might, instead, illuminate the author's career-long engagement with cultural developments on a world scale(-)historical realignments triggered by wartime anxieties and the impending dissolution of the British Empire. Employing an interpretive framework that synthesizes postcolonial theory, cultural anthropology, and contemporary theories of the transnational, I demonstrate how the exile-heroes of three of Lowry's novels(-)Ultramarine (1933), Under the Volcano (1947), and Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid (1968)(-)struggle to navigate the experience of social liminality, dramatizing, in the process, an increasingly fraught relationship between English expatriates and imperial models of English national identity. Rejecting the well-known mythical hero's cyclical quest, so often culminating in a triumphant return to society, the Lowrian exile-hero, instead, remains in a liminal state, emblematizing, through persistent cultural questioning, a transnational concept of identity that resists institutionally prescribed models of thought and behavior.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- Identifier
- CFE0004237, ucf:49524
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004237
- Title
- Hard Luck Baby.
- Creator
-
Lipscomb, Tanya, Thaxton, Terry, Roney, Lisa, Nwakanma, Obi, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Hard Luck Baby is a collection that elucidates the life of a southern, black mother as she grapples with her culture, family, love and the complex reality of black life in America. Hannah, is a woman who was born in the bubbling 40s, raised in the racial 60s and raptured in the drug-infested 80s. It is through these decades that the rough edges of America are exposed. She discusses her life experiences in a manner that allows readers to touch, as much as empathy will allow, the feelings that...
Show moreHard Luck Baby is a collection that elucidates the life of a southern, black mother as she grapples with her culture, family, love and the complex reality of black life in America. Hannah, is a woman who was born in the bubbling 40s, raised in the racial 60s and raptured in the drug-infested 80s. It is through these decades that the rough edges of America are exposed. She discusses her life experiences in a manner that allows readers to touch, as much as empathy will allow, the feelings that contour the deepest areas of her barrel. She shares her first example of love and its reverberations along with various accounts of growth. With minimal mention that demands acknowledgment, Hannah achieves an accurate description of American culture, as it relates to poor black people. She juxtaposes multiple societal and familial norms that contributed to her personal development. She is participating in a self-assigned purge of gripping hard-truths, but the crowning moment starts to take shape as she begins to understand herself and her children. Hard Luck Baby is the music of pained grandparents, parents, siblings, and children played over an American landscape. It is a platform for a woman who has been silenced to speak. Written in first person, many of the poems are stories that might have been told from other perspectives with venom, malice or sorrow, but the speaker takes ownership of her role in creating such emotions. As Hannah speaks, the audience may as well, be sitting crossed-legged on a front porch as she rocks in her chair recalling events from her life. She speaks about love, loss, rejection, disappointment, growth, friendship, fight, and forgiveness. At its close, Hard Luck Baby is an elderly woman giving stern-faced lessons to anyone who would dare to sit and listen.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005827, ucf:50900
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005827
- Title
- Instant Conductors.
- Creator
-
Petralia, Mary, Kesler, Russ, Nwakanma, Obi, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Instant Conductors is a collection of poems meant to engage the reader in conversation about the imperfect nature of the world in relation to the imperfect nature of readerly experience. Walt Whitman wrote, (")I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop / they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.(") And so the things on these pages are intent on transmitting what one experiences in the minutiae of memory and routine: the sounds that surround a blackwater...
Show moreInstant Conductors is a collection of poems meant to engage the reader in conversation about the imperfect nature of the world in relation to the imperfect nature of readerly experience. Walt Whitman wrote, (")I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop / they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.(") And so the things on these pages are intent on transmitting what one experiences in the minutiae of memory and routine: the sounds that surround a blackwater tidepool, what one imagines happens behind the closed doors of the friendly neighbors, or what's heard in the whispers of an elderly man sitting in a waiting room. These pieces are situated along the spectrum of narrative and lyric, between self and other, around various speakers and listeners. They flow through the sensors of Florida swamp, pray to the train ride of some nebulous god or lack thereof, and comment on the artifice of social media. They visit the transient nature of relationships and interrogate how one comes to know, or not know, the self. These pieces speak to old form and new verse. They touch on place, and time, and timelessness. They attempt to reimagine the negative space of individual, sometimes muddled, histories, into some understandable or at least familiar, organic, whole. Universal truths or no, these are the electric currents of language. They are hazardous. They are harmless. They are instances and instants.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005987, ucf:50774
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005987
- Title
- Martin Cenquizqui.
- Creator
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Guillen, Christina, Nwakanma, Obi, Rios, Gabriela, Milanes, Cecilia, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
The historical novel, Cort(&)#233;s Cenquizqui, set in sixteenth century Mexico and Spain, follows the conflicted lives and minds of several characters through an age of freshly crossing culture, language, and power. The narrator, Maria de Quesada of high ranking Spanish and Mexica parents, resents the white world for condemning her work as a female healer or curandera. Yet she acknowledges that she is ill-equipped to leave Mexico City to live in the outlying Indigenous villages. Maria...
Show moreThe historical novel, Cort(&)#233;s Cenquizqui, set in sixteenth century Mexico and Spain, follows the conflicted lives and minds of several characters through an age of freshly crossing culture, language, and power. The narrator, Maria de Quesada of high ranking Spanish and Mexica parents, resents the white world for condemning her work as a female healer or curandera. Yet she acknowledges that she is ill-equipped to leave Mexico City to live in the outlying Indigenous villages. Maria recalls the tale of her three brothers who were caught in a web of pride and prejudices. Her interjections throughout shed light on questions of feminism, nationalism, identity, diversity, love, and queerness. Her tragic story leaves the reader with an understanding of the outsider and of hopeful possibilities for the future.This novel calls on a biblical passage and historical documentation. Page 39 and 191 are examples of the biblical passage and documented speech from historical persons used within the literary context of this work.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005176, ucf:50657
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005176
- Title
- Broken Toys.
- Creator
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Eliot, Robin, Pugh, William, Milanes, Cecilia, Nwakanma, Obi, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
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This novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy.Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the...
Show moreThis novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy.Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the way of Clarity, a secret organization that wants to place humanity under the rule of a personality-type based master race. The Toys' victory comes at the cost of most of their lives, leaving Felicity to find her own way, with neither stepmother nor fairy godmother.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2018
- Identifier
- CFE0006999, ucf:51624
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006999
- Title
- In Double Exile: A Memoir.
- Creator
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Beckwin, Deborah, Nwakanma, Obi, Roney, Lisa, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
In Double Exile: A Memoir examines the life of a family of Ghanaian immigrants and their journeys of acculturation, and the impact of the father's spiraling mental health issues on his family. Through the eyes of their daughter, this thesis briefly explores their lives on the right side of the Atlantic, as medical professionals, and then focuses on the life of their daughter born in America on the left side of the Atlantic. As novelist Georges Simenon has said, (")I am at home everywhere, and...
Show moreIn Double Exile: A Memoir examines the life of a family of Ghanaian immigrants and their journeys of acculturation, and the impact of the father's spiraling mental health issues on his family. Through the eyes of their daughter, this thesis briefly explores their lives on the right side of the Atlantic, as medical professionals, and then focuses on the life of their daughter born in America on the left side of the Atlantic. As novelist Georges Simenon has said, (")I am at home everywhere, and nowhere. I am never a stranger and I never quite belong.(") This memoir explores this tension between alienation and connection, as a second-generation immigrant grows up navigating between various cultures: to dominant American culture, evangelical Christian/Southern culture, African-American culture, and Ghanaian culture. In an attempt to understand the present, this thesis is a sankofa journey back into the author's history. Spanning over four decades, the memoir uncovers various exilic configurations: exiled from family, from ethnic heritage, from home, and from one's self.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- Identifier
- CFE0005304, ucf:50529
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005304
- Title
- Dangerous Instincts: A Collection of Poetry.
- Creator
-
Holt, Kirsten, Nwakanma, Obi, Bartkevicius, Jocelyn, Riegel, Katherine, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
Dangerous Instincts is a collection of poems unified thematically by recurring and interstitial questions of the wilderness, the natural sciences - particularly astrophysics - the occult, and the mythic universe. These poems explore the mystical implications of the natural world and its meaning in the aesthetic consciousness, particularly in a highly secular century. Implied is the poet's self-discovery and search for the divine. The collection emerges, not simply as interpretation, but a...
Show moreDangerous Instincts is a collection of poems unified thematically by recurring and interstitial questions of the wilderness, the natural sciences - particularly astrophysics - the occult, and the mythic universe. These poems explore the mystical implications of the natural world and its meaning in the aesthetic consciousness, particularly in a highly secular century. Implied is the poet's self-discovery and search for the divine. The collection emerges, not simply as interpretation, but a means of coming to terms with the fear of and compulsion to question the universe, and through those questions find illumination in the ordinariness of lived life and in the mystery and magic of complex phenomena. As a whole, the work is largely lyrical; occasionally it calls upon forms such as the villanelle and ekphrasis as deliberate formal poetic experiments. Sometimes the images are familiar recreations of creation myths and forest fires, and sometimes they range into as private and esoteric a realm as occult rituals, Scottish fairytale, and quantum entanglement.Dangerous Instincts is divided into five sections that explore the physical realm in terms of distances: from outward to inward, from heights to depths, and from beyond the speaker's understanding to intrinsically self-reflexive poems written to amplify my notion that at the heart of poetry is myth.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- Identifier
- CFE0004691, ucf:49869
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004691
- Title
- According to the Gospel of Haunted Women.
- Creator
-
Roney, Judith, Kesler, Russ, Nwakanma, Obi, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
- Abstract / Description
-
According to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section...
Show moreAccording to the Gospel of Haunted Women is a collection of seventy-five poems divided into four sections. The voices speaking within, are, indeed haunted by varying definitions. They bespeak complex, troubled emotions such as guilt, shame, and anxiety, yet work towards expressions of courage. The dead and the living are cajoled and accused, while others are provided a format through which they may be heard long after their mouths have closed. The poems are arranged in four sections. Section I, (")We Begin,(") consists of memoir pieces from the poet's early life. Section II, (")We Speak,(") is a dedicated space for the voices of both the famous and the obscure. The third section, (")We Migrate,(") gathers an eclectic assortment of female speakers expressing geographical and mental transference, interweaving personal migratory poems of the author. The final section, (")We Hunger,(") returns to personal pieces that speak from a more settled, albeit still haunted, vantage point.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- Identifier
- CFE0005703, ucf:50149
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005703
