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Literature review: Settler Colonial Family Paradigms in Early 20th Century British Columbia (MAIS 606) 

This lit review project built a foundation for my writing projects and introduced me to settler colonialism in British Columbia. It provided valuable context that prepared me for looking at the structure of my family. 

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Creative nonfiction essay: Basement Treasures: An Inheritance Below the Surface (LTST 693) 

In this creative nonfiction piece, I planned on writing about the process of digging through the archives, but I ended up feeling overwhelmed and resistant so I wrote about that. I reflected on Foucault’s genealogies, ancestral veneration, the purpose of archives, and literal and metaphorical bloodlines. 

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Autoethnographic essay: Treasures in the Basement: Precious Objects, Inherited Narratives, and Bonds Across Generations (MAIS 662) 

In this autoethnographic paper, I reflected on and examined the sociocultural interaction of the impact of previous generations’ belongings on the bereaved. I attempted to answer questions about the impact of these belongings on me. The literature I encountered in my research focused on personal belongings right after the death of a loved one, but I found myself wondering about the impact of the belongings of previous generations.

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Creative writing/research essay: Structural Relevance: A Poetry Cycle in Response to My Great-Grandmother’s Voice (MAIS 621) 

In this arts-based inquiry project, I engaged with my great-grandmother Marjorie’s poetry, wrote my responses, then revised and contextualized my work. Poetry was a portal for ancestral veneration, experienced through ritual, and a way to honour what the beloved dead left behind. This project illuminated therapeutic power of poetry and its potential as a tool for transformation.

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Qualitative research/arts-based inquiry essay: Most Treasured Things (MAIS 640) 

Grounded theory, an exploratory research methodology, provided the perfect entry point to the archives in my basement, which I began to see as a “body of data” rather than a jumble of stuff. While gathering data for this project, I discovered Marjorie’s book of poems, and then went on to find photos, letters, and most profoundly, her journals from the last seven years of her life (1934-1940). Coding these materials gave me the opportunity to closely read and engage with her work. This final project is a hybrid paper that uses qualitative research and an arts-based inquiry approach, integrating the cycle of poems I wrote for MAIS 621.