In one of my inaugural week posts, I admitted that I am an art school dropout. In fact, I dropped out in my final semester (fodder for another post?). In that same post, I suggested that all was not lost because I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees in English. While I love making jewelry, my first creative dream was to be a writer (isn't that true for every English major?). In grad school, I started out as a creative writing major (poetry) but quickly made the switch to literature when I found out how soon the creative writing concentration would be over (yes, there's a pattern; more on that later).
Anyway, the quote I use in my blog description is from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. This is my favorite book in the whole wide world and the subject (along with Corregidora by Gayle Jones) of my Master's Thesis. I received my MA in 2002 so why am I bringing this up? Well, I've started reading Wench, the debut novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who is primarily a short story writer and essayist. Though I am not an intellectual, I am very passionate about African American history and literature, and I am intrigued by Ms. Perkins-Valdez's fictional tale of a real-life summer resort in Ohio where southern slave owners brought their slave mistresses on vacation (I am also impressed with her transition from short story to novel and wonder if some day I may do the same thing :-) Also, a lot of the issues Perkins-Valdez deals with in her novel - slavery, love, and identity - are themes I deal with in the aforementioned thesis. Since my thesis is the most significant piece of writing I've ever done (and one of my greatest accomplishments), I want to share just a bit of it, my conclusion, to give an impression of my interests and concerns at the time (and yeah to show off a little :-)
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