Year of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Degree Name
Creative Writing (Nonfiction)
Department or School/College
English
Committee Chair
Chris Dombrowski
Committee Co-chair
Toni Jensen
Keywords
Beijing, travel, memoir, pandemic
Publisher
University of Montana
Subject Categories
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Literature in English, North America | Reading and Language | Secondary Education | South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies
Abstract
This is a full memoir manuscript that I wrote for my MFA thesis, which is tentatively titled Foreign Expert. In this manuscript, we follow myself as narrator as I struggle to adapt to life in Beijing (prior to the pandemic) while also recovering from a recent divorce. The man I’d been married to for five years back in Iowa had become violently mentally ill, and though I’d been fortunate enough to remove myself from him, I quickly learned that being a foreign expert in China—my residential visa title—required more work than basic survival. By the end of my two years in the megacity, I learned how to build my own community and rebuild trust in myself.
Recommended Citation
Rowe, Jenny L., "Foreign Expert: a memoir manuscript" (2024). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12310.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12310
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Secondary Education Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons
© Copyright 2024 Jenny L. Rowe