Escape from Wonderland - a Novel Crystal Denise Pennymon University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]

University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2018-01-01 Escape From Wonderland - A Novel Crystal Denise Pennymon University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the Fine Arts Commons Recommended Citation Pennymon, Crystal Denise, "Escape From Wonderland - A Novel" (2018). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 1511. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/1511 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ESCAPE FROM WONDERLAND - A NOVEL - CRYSTAL DENISE PENNYMON Master’s Program in Creative Writing APPROVED: Tim Hernandez, M.F.A., Chair Elizabeth Sheid, M.F.A. Jose De Pierola, Ph.D. Charles Ambler, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School Dedication To my grandmother, Annie Lois Price Pennymon June 3, 1927 – October 29, 2015 To my aunt, Janice Maria Pennymon Morgan March 17, 1958 – September 3, 2016 To my baby brother, Jonathan Dennard Pennymon May 9, 1985 – July 13, 2017 ESCAPE FROM WONDERLAND -A NOVEL- by CRYSTAL DENISE PENNYMON, B.S. THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Liberal Arts The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO May 2018 Acknowledgements In remembrance of my grandmother, Annie Lois Pennymon (1927-2015), who said that I told little lies all the way from Georgia to Kentucky while sitting on the arm rest of her Oldsmobile Toronado at 3-years-old. But, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my mother, Veda L. Pennymon, who must have known all along that I had a voice in writing when she expressed that I should have gone to college and majored in English. She must have seen something that even she didn’t understand until now. And I would be just as remiss to exclude that over 20 years later my fiancé, Frederick Walker, reiterated my gift after reading something as simple as a letter to an apartment complex and ‘accidently’ reading my journals. For this is where my life changed and put me on a road to where I should have been travelling all along and long ago. I have to thank Dr. Francisco Lopez of Middle Georgia State University, where I earned my Bachelor’s degree, for truly listening to my desires and putting me in contact with Dr. Amish Gosh at the University of Texas at El Paso and ultimately into a program where I could confirm or deny whether I truly had “the gift”. To my family and friends who cheered me forward. All loving my creative voice, but the few giving me the hard truths: Thank you! Thank you so much! This novel is one that comes from my own personal pain, but it is also a reminder that I have survived and can now bask in the happiness of this written material that, hopefully, will encourage someone to go forth, be strong, hang on and be successful. To God goes all the glory! Finally, I have to throw kisses at my children, Troise and Cammie, who have given me a purpose to keep going and to be real with myself while I re-acquaint myself with my gift. My grandson, Zion, just reiterates my continuance. Your existence is what drives me. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................v Preface..................................................................................................................................1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Concerns ..............................................................................................................................6 Remedies ..............................................................................................................................9 Summary and Conclusion ..................................................................................................15 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 18 Escape From Wonderland - A Novel ............................................................................................. 20 Vita ...................................................................................................................................156 v Preface Introduction By combining the tumultuousness of real life and the genre of fantasy, I needed to reveal that the possibilities of self-discovery are measured in universal parameters. These combinations can also expose the mental capacity of one who lives in the painful, psychological world of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), paranoia, schizophrenia, mental blocks, and the such while still physically walking around in the world that caused it. To define the characteristics of the unlikely couple of real life and fantasy sounds like an oxymoron, but it also defines a life that needs definition and healing when used in the arena of mental disturbances. According to Merriam- Webster Dictionary, real life is defined as existing or occurring in reality: drawn from or drawing on actual events or situations. And then its total difference, fantasy, being defined in several ways. One way that Merriam-Webster Dictionary defined fantasy is hallucination. It is also defined as fantasia. Meaning that this is a journey that can be taken on through the euphoria of something artistic, i.e. music, paintings, literature and the performing arts. So how do we depict the pain of an unsettling condition effectively in literature? The Adventures of Alice and Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is often referenced in the piece that I am presenting. Alice, who is dealing with an early transition to adulthood, seems much like the young Simone Harvey in my work. With the sundry reasons encompassing this very epic story surrounding Alice’s adventures in this alternative world of Wonderland, the implications range from drugs, sex and colonization to the psychedelic age of the ‘60’s on into the progression of life of a curious 10-year-old girl. Though I can rationalize the implications that Mr. Carroll may have experimented in his share of psychotropic drugs when he composed this story and the fact that during the 1860’s the world was changing drastically with the Abolition of Slavery, with the wars 1 and the death of a president, Abraham Lincoln, these potential aspects could have strongly influenced his work. I can even logically embrace that the historical endurance of this story proved true in that during the 1960’s the drugs could have been reiterated as to what Alice in Wonderland was about based on the actual happenings during that time. Of course to support this perception the actual story illustrated a caterpillar sitting atop a mushroom smoking from a hookah. How ironic. But I trust to believe that by the time that I partook of this story as a young girl myself, not much older than the protagonist herself and around the late 1970’s, I interpreted that Alice was going through a “coming of age” saga all her own. That she was dealing with growing up in her own way and Wonderland became a fantasy place that she could escape to while going through her growing pains. How could this not be deemed as mental disturbances when growing up has been proven to be quite the difficult journey? Thus intertwining the theory of real life and fantasy that both Alice and Simone share. In the “coming-of-age” novel that I have written, Escape From Wonderland, it loiters on the historical exposition of women degradation (specifically, but not limited to black women), the perpetuation of abuse where the abused becomes the abuser and the sweeping-under-the-rug syndrome that imprisons the women who have adapted to it and how the closeted skeletons rattle and fall out for all involved. Or, those who have plainly locked it away into the mind chest. Much of these thoughts can be signified from a psychological aspect, but literature can explain it from the combination of acute imagination and the personal pain fueled by personal experience to emote awareness and revelation. Zora Neale Hurston wrote an inspiring piece of literary fiction called Their Eyes Were Watching God, where her character, Janie, comes into some hard realizations. In Chapter’s 7 and 8 she realizes that she doesn’t want to be a trophy wife and that she doesn’t want to be pretentious to people who really didn’t care anything about her or her position. This is evident 2 when her dying, second husband, Joe Sparks, started degrading her in front of their customers at their store. After Janie fights back in words of degradation he ultimately reacts as most abusive men do out of being cowardly to other men. This is evident on page 80 of the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God: “Good-for-nothing’s like Dave and Lum and Jim wouldn’t change place with him. For what can excuse a man in the eyes of other men for lack of strength? Raggedy-behind squirts of sixteen and seventeen would be giving him their merciless pity out of their own eyes while their mouth said something humble.

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