Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English
First Advisor
Lee Ann Roripaugh
Abstract
American Eyes, a memoir in essays in the vein of Elisabeth Eave’s Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting lost, examines how the desire to travel, quest, and be transformed is complicated by conventional notions of home, gender, success, and culture. In a collection that spans twenty-five years in Thailand, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and the U.S., the author ponders the ramifications for women who eschew traditional notions of home and family to instead live life “on the road.” Exploring themes of travel, transformation, culture, identity, and (dis)embodiment as an American woman who remains both geographically and culturally adrift, American Eyes is also a thoughtful, and sometimes humorous, examination of identity and how temporary homes in foreign settings often serve as a mirror to who she is as a woman, a writer, and an American. As the author moves from Washington D.C. to Jakarta to Abu Dhabi to South Dakota, and then back to Indonesia, she considers the impact of place and culture on identity, especially when one’s context shifts and changes. While the topics explored—serial killers, plane crashes, root canals, and depression—are often dark, they are always buoyed by the absurd, such as when the author sets fire to her garbage in Sumatra, wears two different shoes to work in Washington D.C., and requests yellow veneers in Abu Dhabi. Despite these seemingly disparate topics—and settings—American Eyes turns the same unflinching, and ultimately American, gaze to a life in perpetual motion.
Subject Categories
Creative Writing
Keywords
Creative Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir
Number of Pages
182
Publisher
University of South Dakota
Recommended Citation
Phillips, Heather, "American Eyes" (2024). Dissertations and Theses. 221.
https://red.library.usd.edu/diss-thesis/221