Abstract
For this project, I used my grandparents’ journals to write stories loosely based on their lives. I introduced and concluded each story in the present: in scenes drawn from interactions between my grandparents, myself, and my siblings in the last decade. In addition to retelling some of my grandparents’ stories, my aim in these stories was to explore the effects of dementia on my grandparents, specifically thinking about what happens to a story when the person who lived it has forgotten it. “The Quest for the Curlers” is about my grandma and her friends trying to fix a friend’s hair. “Thank God I’m Alive and Not in Jail” is about my grandpa and his friends playing hookie. “A Picnic Gone Wrong” is about a Saturday that was supposed to be relaxing for my grandma and her friends but ends up going terribly wrong. And “The Little Red Wagon That Wouldn’t Fly” is about my grandpa meeting his closest friends—friends who appear in earlier stories—when he was ten. The last story tells the story of how my grandparents met and fell in love. The reading I did to research for this project taught me about writing memoirs, writing Southern dialect, and what life was like in the 40s and 50s in the South. The most important parts of the writing process were the workshops with Dr. Martin and my peers. Their feedback helped me to figure out what worked and didn’t work and how to hone my writing skills.
Key words: historical fiction, grandparents, 40s, 50s, writing, short stories
Included in
Thank God I'm Alive and Not in Jail: A Short Story Collection
For this project, I used my grandparents’ journals to write stories loosely based on their lives. I introduced and concluded each story in the present: in scenes drawn from interactions between my grandparents, myself, and my siblings in the last decade. In addition to retelling some of my grandparents’ stories, my aim in these stories was to explore the effects of dementia on my grandparents, specifically thinking about what happens to a story when the person who lived it has forgotten it. “The Quest for the Curlers” is about my grandma and her friends trying to fix a friend’s hair. “Thank God I’m Alive and Not in Jail” is about my grandpa and his friends playing hookie. “A Picnic Gone Wrong” is about a Saturday that was supposed to be relaxing for my grandma and her friends but ends up going terribly wrong. And “The Little Red Wagon That Wouldn’t Fly” is about my grandpa meeting his closest friends—friends who appear in earlier stories—when he was ten. The last story tells the story of how my grandparents met and fell in love. The reading I did to research for this project taught me about writing memoirs, writing Southern dialect, and what life was like in the 40s and 50s in the South. The most important parts of the writing process were the workshops with Dr. Martin and my peers. Their feedback helped me to figure out what worked and didn’t work and how to hone my writing skills.
Key words: historical fiction, grandparents, 40s, 50s, writing, short stories