The town that made monday, part I

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Leah H. Davenport (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Holly Jones

Abstract: There they taught her modesty, chastity, silence, obedience... She did as she was told, but it was all very confusing, because she could not understand why the things that happen outside of people were so different from what she felt inside of her.--From "Virgin Violeta" by Katherine Anne Porter In studying human memory, psychologists encounter a phenomenon called the Reminiscence Bump: the period in which a substantial proportion of a person's memories in his or her life cluster between the ages of ten and thirty. We remember our young adulthood vividly, and the choices we make in those tender years often dramatically shape the way the rest of our lives unfold. In this first half of my novel, I examine the inner lives of two young people, Dex and Nore, how they encounter and challenge the pressures and traumas placed upon them by the society of a rural Texas town in the early 1980s. How does a young woman survive with a child born out of wedlock, in a world run by oil men and homecoming queens, preachers and football boosters? How does a young man shore up under the weight of seeing his athletic prowess, his self-worth as determined by the town, peak at eighteen? Why would someone choose not to raise their own child, and what prior decisions eventually culminate in that choice? In this first half of the novel, I explore the fraught relationship between mothers and daughters, young men and young women--anticipating a deeper excavation of these questions of parenthood, love, and forgiveness in part II.

Additional Information

Publication
Thesis
Language: English
Date: 2013
Keywords
East Texas, Family, Football, Single motherhood, Southern literature
Subjects
Coming of age $v Fiction
Families $v Fiction

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