All Skate, Now Reverse

Abstract

All Skate, Now Reverse is a memoir that consists of personal narratives that are set in or are about my growing up in Nebraska. It is about life and its defining moments, and the collection summons up childhood epiphanies and the pain of events associated with becoming an adult: divorce, betrayal, and death. The text is framed with the binary of east and west. The liminal space, which creates a landscape where objects and questions related to the familiar world are explored, is where the narrative takes place. Traditionally, the West represents the pursuit of the unknown and the east represents tradition. For me, this was reversed. The west represents tradition because it is where my perspective of social norms, societal expectations, and gender roles was introduced. The collection as a whole seeks to convey a greater truth about how family and place inform the development of an individual.