Without A Map: An Abandoned Woman's Search For Truth

Meredith Hall's memoir Without a Map is the story of a woman who as a young girl, was shunned by her family, church, school and the rest of her community after becoming pregnant at the age of 16. Having been exiled and abandoned over the course of her pregnancy, she works her way into the world alone, without family and without her child, to live a life full of sorrow as well as great strength.
Throughout her story, Hall focuses on the idea of shunning and abandonment, both within her family and her community in Hampton, NH. In her introduction, she explores the position of her 16 year old self in the midst of both familial and social disapproval, within a town full of tolerated imperfection; "They were the Community" (Hall xi). It is obvious that in writing Without a Map, Hall has given herself the opportunity to explore her life and the incidences which have made her who she is today, stating "Shunning is as precise as a scalpel, an absolute excision leaving, miraculously, not a trace of a scar on the community body. The scarring is left for the girl, an intense, debilitating wound that weeps for the rest of her life" (Hall xxvii).
Using Without a Map as my primary text, I will explore how Meredith Hall utilizes the genre of memoir to find her own answers. I will examine the psychology behind Hall's abandonment and how she uses her personal truth as a catalyst to find a greater truth: an understanding of past events.