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NADIA MONTGOMERY: A NOVEL A thesis submitted to the Kent State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for University Honors by Brittany Cole December, 2017 Thesis written by Brittany Cole Approved by _____________________________________________________________________, Advisor ______________________________________________, Chair, Department of English Accepted by ___________________________________________________, Dean, Honors College ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..1 PART I. …………………………………………………………………….……4 II. …………………………………………………………………….……40 III. …………………………………………………………………….……102 IV. …………………………………………………………………….……162 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………….211 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS On my first day of class as a college student, I met Dr. Karman. She was the professor for my first English course, and since then, she has continued to guide and encourage me throughout several other English courses, and so naturally, I wanted her to be the one to advise me through the process of crafting my honors thesis. I am so grateful for your counsel and support over these past three years and it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you. Many thanks to Dr. Dauterich, Dr. Winebrenner, and Dr. St. James, who also assisted me greatly in the completion of this novel. I would also like to thank my family for their endless love and reassurance. You have always motivated me to follow my passion for writing, and I am so blessed to have grown up in an environment that truly nurtured this in me. Additionally, I would like to thank my boyfriend. You have been such an inspiration and I am so appreciative of your feedback and insight, and for being my sunshine. Lastly, I am excited to finally share this with everyone who has rooted for me and my writing endeavors throughout my life. I wrote my first novel! iv 1 INTRODUCTION Sixty-five years ago, J.D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye and captivated readers with its moody, cynical narrator and coming-of-age motif. The novel tapped into an element of adolescent existence that resonated with readers so greatly that today, it is still being taught in high schools across America. While it is inarguably a highly influential work within the history of American literature, The Catcher in the Rye has perhaps gone stale—the issues and environment Holden lived in are now foreign to modern-day readers—but what will take its place in the hands and hearts of today‘s young adults? During my research, I found that there were few, if any, novels that shared such a coming-of-age journey as The Catcher in the Rye does, and even fewer that feature a female main character. In an article, ―Why There are no Female Versions of The Outsiders or The Catcher in the Rye,‖ Paul Thompson attributes this absence of female- led classics to an overall invalidation of the female experience in literature and society‘s tendency to write off works of fiction featuring women as frivolous. I found this lack of material troubling and decided to fashion my own attempt at writing a novel from a female viewpoint inspired by Holden‘s story that would captivate readers and validate the experiences of young women. In crafting this thesis project, my goal was to create a Young Adult coming-of-age novel that features a female protagonist and the struggles she has internally, which 2 influence how she views the world. The twenty-first century female perspective of this work is crucial. The Catcher in the Rye follows white, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield as he runs away to New York City in the 1940‘s, whereas my thesis follows biracial, twenty-one-year-old Nadia Montgomery as she runs away to Washington, D.C. in the current year. As I wrote this, I aimed to capture the complexity of the female experience. I thought it was important that Nadia celebrate female role models, such as Beyonce, Michelle Obama, and Ada Lovelace, and I also thought it was important to write a predominantly female cast of characters to demonstrate how women need to support each other, and also to provide the reader with more than one female character to study. Additionally, I sought to include various elements of a woman‘s daily life in order to validate those experiences, such as the desire to feel and look good, the shame women are made to feel for having sex, and the fear of possibly being harmed by a male predator on the streets. In the spirit of The Catcher in the Rye, however, I also aimed to parallel some of Holden Caulfield‘s qualities and experiences. One of the themes I deal with in this is the compulsion to run away—both physically and emotionally. The premise for my story is that Nadia runs away from her college town and her classwork obligations, at the same time she consistently attempts to run away from her memories, feelings, and vulnerabilities; thus, she is often defensive, blunt, and moody, viewing the world in a cynical, disaffected manner—much like Holden. However, it was not my goal to merely rewrite The Catcher in the Rye from a female point of view, and therefore while elements 3 of Holden and his journey—his slightly detestable and ungrateful nature, his poor academic performance, his eventual acceptance of therapy—may be present in my thesis, Nadia is still her own unique personality and embarks on a journey true to her character. The process has been emotionally grueling, but I have spent a lot of time listening to Nadia‘s voice form and watching her tale unfold. I believe that I have created an insightful, emotional, and telling story that taps into what it means to be a young woman in today‘s world. Ultimately, Nadia faces many of the issues I‘ve observed my fellow women—and even myself—cope with and endure, and at the end of it all, she represents something larger than herself: the challenges of inhabiting young womanhood in a world vastly different from the one Holden knew, making her voice and her journey incredibly relevant to today‘s young readers. 4 PART ONE Ellis says I‘m ―unapologetic.‖ She says I‘m a lot of things, but she also says I‘m unapologetic and I think that‘s very fitting. Ellis is my best friend and so if anyone‘s qualified to call me things, it‘s her. She knows me better than my lousy parents, or that stupid boy Julian I had a crush on for a week, or even my aunt—who‘s basically my favorite adult—and especially better than I know myself. But if I had myself all figured out, that‘d be really boring anyway, don‘t ya think? Ellis says I‘m unapologetic a lot, but she also said it one day when we were in line to check out at Goodwill. We were shopping at Goodwill to get some new fall clothes. It was the beginning of October, and the summer heat was finally cooling off, and as with any fairly dramatic weather change, Ellis and I were itching to get some new clothes. I was looking to stock up on some flannels, and she was on the hunt for some cozy sweaters. She and I are all about shopping second-hand because it‘s cheaper and better for the environment, to re- purpose clothing rather than buy sweat shop clothing and then throw it all away in four months. We like to be activists when we can be. In any case, I had found a really dope orange and yellow flannel, along with some cool combat boots and a black velvet shirt, and she had picked out an armful‘s worth of sweaters—all of which I approved during our fitting room session—and we had headed 5 to the checkout. There were two people in line so far, and both of them only had a few items. As we approached, at the last minute, I got distracted by a wooden horse figurine displayed on the checkout aisle end cap, so I took a few steps out of line to pick it up, because as much as my mother hounded me as a child not to touch everything in stores, I still have to touch things I‘m interested in. Anyway, so I turned over the wooden horse— it was unpainted, slender, the size of my hand—and, when satisfied and bored with it a second later, put it back and stepped back beside Ellis. ―Go ahead, cut me,‖ I heard from behind me. I turned around, because I got that weird sense when you know somebody‘s talking to or about you even though there was no pretense, and there, behind me, was this middle-aged, small white woman with graying brown hair and a shopping cart piled full of clothes. She wasn‘t looking at me, though; she was staring ahead, her eyes set firmly on some point beyond us—I don‘t know, maybe she was looking out into the parking lot. I wasn‘t sure what the heck she was talking about, so I asked, ―What was that?‖ Ellis kind of half-twisted around to see what this exchange was, innocently holding her sweaters in her arms. I was focused on this old bat. ―I said, ‗Go ahead, cut me.‘ It‘s fine. I was here first, though.‖ The woman would not look at me. She was resolute in staring beyond me, and I was so annoyed I didn‘t even really look at her face or anything, but her whole demeanor was aggressive, especially in the way she was defiantly leaning against the cart handle, hip popped and shoulders tense.

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