A Face That Looks Like Yours
Date of Graduation
Spring 2004
Degree
Master of Arts in Writing
Department
English
Committee Chair
Nancy Walker
Abstract
A face that looks like yours is a memoir, written as much as possible from the view of a child. However, it is not written to children. It is written to adults. My goal in this piece was to create a situation where a reader can meet this boy (who was, of course, me) and understand him both from the perspective of an adult and child. This dual understanding of the situation creates a sense of irony, in knowing that the main character sees reality in a certain way, and yet the reader begins to understand the same reality very differently. This is especially important as the main character is a quiet and shy person who does not interact very well with the world. He interprets and deals with things incompletely and makes assumptions about the world from his incomplete perspective. This is also a memoir about a rather boring childhood. The factors that make up a normal memoir (drugs, famous parents, abuse, etc.) are all absent from my life, and so I instead had to focus on finding times that seem insignificant, and yet are not. The work is unfinished. I had to leave much out in order to meet page requirements. The focus is on snapshots that I remembered, and the stories are told simply and directly, with a minimum of intrusion from my adult perspective.
Keywords
memoir, memory, childhood, adolescence, innocence
Subject Categories
Creative Writing
Copyright
© Sam Woelk
Recommended Citation
Woelk, Sam, "A Face That Looks Like Yours" (2004). MSU Graduate Theses. 2623.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/2623
Dissertation/Thesis
