Back to search

Virginia Tech

Last Rites for Uptown

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This autobiographical poetry collection is about identity, belonging, and brokenness, dealing with the aftermath of a dead mother, a deadbeat father, and a decaying home filled with years of trash and memory. In many ways, this collection is a buildungsroman. For me, what seem like ordinary questions become a journey into memories and experiences that were once repressed. As a child of a hoarder, one who fielded questions from family, friends, and the Department of Human Service for almost twenty years, I am just starting to confidently address the many silences that were and are present in my family: my mother’s quest to hide her breast cancer and her subsequent death as a result of her secrecy; my father’s four other children that I have never met; and my grandparents’ military history spanning three continents in the 1950s and 1960s.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Fine Arts
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Creative Writing
Department dc:contributor.department
English
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2012

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Fields, Raina Lauren
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Meitner, Erika S.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • D'Aguiar, Frederick M.
  • Mann, Jeffrey A.

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en_US

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
etd-04152012-143340
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77480

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Fields, Raina Lauren. Last Rites for Uptown. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77480