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Gamache, Lillian M.

English

2007

MA

In this thesis I present two autobiographical essays from the point of view of someone who has struggled with and never been able to conform to conventional portrayals of the American family and the perfect mother. I start with an introductory essay about how the next two essays evolved from journal to autobiographical text. Through this writing transformation, moving from memory to scene, reflection to stories, and confession to social themes, I also moved to seeing myself as a subject. The first essay tells the story of my early childhood living in an extended family of first-generation Italian immigrants. By contrasting my home life with the ebb and flow of suburban American life that surrounded me, I emphasize the contrast that Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson observe in women's autobiography: autobiography has historically been considered a model of a representative or exemplary life, yet such a perception excludes all non-traditional voices and experiences as flawed, imperfect, outside the American landscape and outside the identity of a representative American or an exemplary citizen. In the second essay, I continue this theme of the alternate experience of identity by fast forwarding from my early childhood to what it has been like to parent a young teenager experimenting with drugs and pushing the limits of our relationship as mother and son. Through a series of scenes, I demonstrate the incongruities between representative and real life. This story does not come to a settled conclusion, but by removing or pushing against the barriers of the exemplary citizen, the representative American, and the perfect mother, I aim to reveal the raw beauty of each moment, including through their failure to fit with conventional expectations and definitions.