Dorland Perry, Dawn ChryselleFords of My Dreams: Stories is a literary manuscript-in-progress featuring girls and women rising up from rural poverty. These linked stories bear witness to coming-of-age as a ritual marked by extreme rejection of others and even violence; to the adulthoods shaped by invisible pasts of need and neglect; and to the survivor's guilt that plagues those who sacrificed or abandoned others whose futures weighed less in order to rise. In the tradition of Dorothy Allison's Trash, these stories complicate the assumption that arriving at a higher economic class always outgains the emotional cost. With Fords of My Dreams, the author seeks to open a new set of questions around the American dream of class ascendance.enThesisLiteratureAmerican literatureRegional studiesClassMidwestParentificationPovertyRural AmericaSouthwest