Date of Award

Spring 2021

Document Type

Thesis Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

Committee Chairperson

Jacqueline Alnes, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Emily Aguiló-Pérez, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Kristine Ervin, Ph.D.

Abstract

We Belong Together, is a memoir in a series of lyrical essays exploring the themes of motherhood, identity, and belonging from a deeply personal perspective. The reader will witness how I found, made room, and discovered where I belong through loss, rejection, evolution, and through the realization that love crosses borders, cultures, and transforms in transcendental ways. I came as a student with a foot always strongly placed in Mexico; I stayed as a multicultural Latina who married a Lebanese man to raise a family in a place that still sees us as strangers.

The essays that are part of this collection are as diverse as the range of emotions that I have experienced in the evolution of my identity. The use of imagery and metaphor is complemented by research and personal experiences that allow the reader to peer into the world of an immigrant woman who is raising a Middle-Easter and Latinx American family of the twenty-first century.

We Belong Together more than a title is the affirmation that belonging is seldomly found in a place but within people. Wherever my husband, our children, and I are together is where we belong. Everything else is the outside.

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