Hutchinson, Shakarean2022-04-062018-12Hutchinson_cornell_0058O_10421http://dissertations.umi.com/cornell:10421https://hdl.handle.net/1813/111169MFA theses in English Language and Literature are not available for direct download. Users wishing to access an MFA thesis in this collection may request access by clicking the link to the restricted file(s) and completing the request form. If we have contact information for the author, we will contact them and request permission to provide access. If we do not have contact information or the author denies or does not respond to our inquiry, we will not be able to provide access.In the summer of 2014, twelve-year-old girl Odessa discovers that she is part of a line of “crossers,” women who move between the worlds of the living and the dead. Their job is to help those confined to a middle plane, a plane where the day an individual died repeats itself over and over. One of those confined is fifteen-year-old Tenah, a distant relative of Odessa, who has been trapped in a between world since 1858. She depends on Odessa to help her, but Odessa isn’t so keen on the idea. It is only through forces greater than herself – most notably Odessa’s grandmother Desi, a crosser herself – that Odessa reluctantly helps Tenah. Told in two different perspectives and points-of-view, The Body Was There reckons with race, gender, the legacy of slavery, and, most importantly, the responsibility of family.endissertation or thesis