Date of Award

6-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Bin Lloyd Ramke

Keywords

Poetry, Nonfiction, Travel, Human migration

Abstract

The Book of Possibilities is a composition of creative nonfiction, poetry and travel narratives/meditations on home and the diaspora, creativity and exile. The book is concerned with hybridity, not only in form but also content. As a result, it explores spaces and connections between leaving and living, and how creative imagination is essential for survival. The movement of humans from one region to another is as old as evolution, from the earliest nomads to the present globalized and dispersed communities. The Book of Possibilities is not interested in why people move but what happens when they do and the interventions that emerge from encountered spaces. It focuses on the relationships between migrants and their homes, what they carry or leave behind. I use travel, both physical and dreamscape to examine shifting and transforming identities, in addition to diasporic/migratory themes such as alienation, estrangement, dislocation, loss, absence, and nostalgia. In this way, travel functions as a mediating space in which conscious individual actions and the collective unconscious converge to create new perceptions and knowledge. Through dreams and lived experiences, I explore how as evolving and migratory humans we may get away from ourselves in order to rediscover ourselves. Using the Rhizome theory developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I broadly engage with free and forced movements that create diaspora communities of professional workers, proletariat, refugees, exiles, travelers and nomads, regardless of nationality or race.

The Book of Possibilities consists of more than 100 vignettes that experiment with perception, becomings, ways of knowing, and music, as my four major subjects that link and hold the four parts of the book together: Part I Graceland or Homeland, Part II Speak the Document, Part III Desertscapes and Part IV Rhizomes. Through departures, arrivals, endless journeys and returns, I question and demonstrate what it means to be at home in language, culture and the world at large.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Mildred Kiconco Barya

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

164 pgs

Discipline

Creative writing

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