Fragments from a Childhood: A Collection of Short Stories

This thesis is a collection of short stories exploring the loss of innocence inherent in the shift from childhood to adolescence; throughout the writing process I draw from my own landscape of experiences as a woman, who was once a young girl coming of age. I examine parental roles in the context of growing up, juxtaposing this against the experience of the child. Looking specifically at parents, who did not wish to be thrust into the role of father or mother, as well as examining the intrinsic dysfunction of family in conjunction with the process of growing up. While the collection is fictional stories, I draw from the non-fiction of real life too create the infrastructure of the story -- building the fiction of the story around this base, of non-fictional experience. This collection includes six short stories addressing the scope of mother, father, and child relationships, the way each individual functions within the context of the nuclear family. The macro idea in this collection is the loss of innocence, while the micro subtext involves the inter-personal relationships within families