Learning to Create: A Collection of Personal Essays

• Main Author: Christiansen, Naomi Lund
• Format: Others
• Published: BYU ScholarsArchive 2004
• Subjects: personal essay; infertility; pregnancy; creative nonfiction; French feminism; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/171; https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1170&context=etd

This is a creative thesis that focuses on the infertility experiences of the author. The introduction examines the author's justification for choosing personal essay as a genre and French feminism as the guiding theory in writing the essays. Six personal essays center on the author's attempts to have a child and the discoveries and failures along the way. Throughout literary history, women's bodies have traditionally been viewed from the outside looking in, as objects to be reified and preserved or exploited and used. Using the writing the body critics as a theoretical framework, the essays discuss the comforts and discomforts of being inside a female body looking out. Although personal, the essays attempt to connect to the larger world. In several of the essays associations are made between the experiences of the author and the experiences of other women. Several essays also reveal the differing perspectives between her and her husband as they experience infertility.