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Counter Clockwise Culture Shock, Matthew Mercer
Counter Clockwise Culture Shock, Matthew Mercer
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Counter Clockwise Culture Shock is a memoir focused the narrator's return to his hometown, a place he barely escaped: drug addiction, incarceration, bad relationships, alienation, an Oedipal mother, and suicidal threats. It is reflection on both culture and self, after I gained an outside perspective from Japan. The narrator is forced to relive nihilism and monotony, and face the troubles of his younger years. It describes the difficult journey of today's youth, in an evermore technologically dynamic world - with few role models able to plot a course through. This is a meditation on past actions that ended in survival. …
Boitawl: Soil, Lost And Left, Bishnupriya Chowdhuri
Boitawl: Soil, Lost And Left, Bishnupriya Chowdhuri
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Boitawl ("Boi"- lack, devoid of, "Tawl"- bottom/ ground/ foundation), the word in one of the Bengali dialects refers to one without a ground beneath her feet. The thesis, a hybrid collection of prose and verse including narratives and graphic vignettes, flash, fabulist and short stories, prose poems and free verse imagines the inside worlds of such un-settled existences. In the process, the pieces connect migration, memory, childhood and lost towns with fractured humans caught in between - to reveal what lies under pillars of desires, the shapes of unsaid longings and recurrent images in their dreams.
Small Nothings, Leah Washburn
Small Nothings, Leah Washburn
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Small Nothings is a collection of ten short stories exploring the connection between place, friendship, and family. Set in Missouri's capital, a variety of characters grapple with different types of separation and loneliness. Couples struggle with emotional distance, children try to reconnect with their parents, and an old woman faces the loss of her independence. Through small conflicts and choices, these stories revolve around isolation, disconnection, and absence. How do missing presences affect family and friendship? How do people deal with change through everyday choices?
What Remains, Michael Leavitt
What Remains, Michael Leavitt
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Grief is a personal thing, as unique as it is ubiquitous, and each character in What Remains approaches their grief in a different way and handles it with differing degrees of success. The collection blends both realist and fabulist stories in its efforts to explore these themes, from the eponymous "What Remains," in which a man attempts to reconcile his feelings about the death of his abusive, absentee father, and what that means for his relationship with his own son; to "Convoy," a story of a Marine who confronts the culture of violence into which he's been indoctrinated, and which …
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories, Brad Barth
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories, Brad Barth
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Neighborhood & Cat Eyes: Stories is a collection of short stories dealing with themes related to isolation, otherness in the modern world, and suburban dread. These two sets of stories deal with different variations on these themes. In the "Cat Eyes" collection of stories, isolation becomes a more prominent thread. These four stories each center on a different individuals afflicted with having cat eyes in place of normal human eyes. Through the lenses of childhood, adulthood, and someone not afflicted with the cat eye condition, otherness and isolation are explored. Each individual offers a unique glimpse into the lives …
Nothing Buried Stays Buried, Stephanie Porven
Nothing Buried Stays Buried, Stephanie Porven
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Nothing Buried Stays Buried is a collection of poems that embraces raw imagery, threads of magical realism, and allusions to classical mythology in an attempt to make sense of the tangible and intangible losses experienced by its speakers. Told through the voices of confessional speakers who struggle with loneliness, identity, faith, and death, the collection aims to delve into contrasting themes that have long been perpetuated by Greek and Roman mythology: passionate love and violent death, liberation and violation, the natural alongside the celestial. Poems such as "What You Left Behind," "Loneliness Braids My Hair," and "If You Die First" …
Red Tide And Other Stories, Heather Vazquez
Red Tide And Other Stories, Heather Vazquez
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Red Tide and Other Stories is a fictional collection of eleven short stories in which characters react to their struggles with loss, frustration, regret, loneliness, and love. Each story presents a strong sense of place and moment, while examining how characters are influenced by these elements. While individual stories present new characters and scenarios, they are connected by elements of water and include aspects of coasts and shorelines in the setting of the real world. The commonality of water in the stories works to demonstrate a connectivity between all people and cultures because water is shared and linked between continents …
Golden Years, Sienna Malik
Golden Years, Sienna Malik
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Golden Years is the culmination of the author's studies in Creative Nonfiction writing, with attention to hybrid forms of the genre, combined with her professional background in screenwriting, and research interests in nostalgia and cultural preservation in the modern age. In the collection of essays, the author blends established forms of Creative Nonfiction, such as the braided essay, with literary conventions borrowed from other forms of written communication, such as the screenplay ("You Must Remember This," "Driver's Seat"), the cookbook ("Tip of my Tongue"), a travel guide ("A Trolley Runs Through It") and fabulist fiction ("Selkie on the Shore"). Through …
Broken Toys, Robin Eliot
Broken Toys, Robin Eliot
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy. Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the way of Clarity, a secret organization that wants to place humanity under the rule …
Jindo, Iljeen Jo
Jindo, Iljeen Jo
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Jindo is a novel that incorporates drawings, photos, symbols, and comic panels in collaboration with visual artists, Minna Moon and Myungee Jo. In addition to the drawings, the novel integrates Korean folktales and family mythology into the narrative. The hybrid work also weaves elements of speculative fiction, fantasy, realism, horror, and comedy game theory. The novel is told in the first person voice of Korean American, Jindo Cho. In the wake of a nationally televised humiliation, Jindo Cho leaves the world of competitive figure skating to attend state college. When, at the beginning of the semester, his childhood best friend …