As many roast bones as you need
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI--COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] As Many Roast Bones As You Need is a creative dissertation that combines the examination of grief and our connection to animals found in Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk with the attention to form and non-chronological storytelling in Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. It is a book about self-realization and how we are shaped by the relationships we hold dear. Across twenty-one essays, the book explores parenthood, mental health, and how we remember the dead, tracing the broken ways we love and the effects of a destabilized childhood as I navigate the conflicting responsibilities to those I love, both human and animal, living and dead. In the critical introduction, "The Diary of Anne Frank's Impact on Creative Nonfiction," I explore the mid-twentieth century shift in memoir to the more confession-centered, novelistic approach found during the memoir craze that began in the 1990s. I argue that The Diary of Anne Frank was instrumental in the following aspects: the ordinary narrator, its use of dramatic irony, its lack of explicit reflection, and its twist on the epistolary style in creative nonfiction.
Degree
Ph. D.