Freshly Fourteen: An Original Creative Nonfiction Manuscript and Analysis of Trauma in the Memoirs of Three Women Writers

Abstract

The thesis “Freshly Fourteen: An Original Creative Nonfiction Manuscript and Analysis of Trauma in the Memoirs of Three Women Writers” focuses on the psychological idea of releasing trauma through writing, with attention to some elements of craft memoirists employ to speak what some psychologists have labeled the “unspeakable.” A critical foreword analyzes three memoirs by women who experienced trauma. The foreword discusses ways these memoirs give voice to trauma, and also employs feminist rhetoric to interpret women’s shared experience. “Freshly Fourteen,” the original manuscript, explores childhood sexual abuse and failed adult authority, and is contextualized within this discussion of some of the mechanisms necessary to access and write trauma.