Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Out Of View: Stories, Justin Bendell

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OUT OF VIEW is a collection of stories set in the American Southwest about people coping with loss—the death of parents, children, ideals, innocence.

The characters in this collection reap or resist lessons of life as they struggle to find their place in the world. In “First Rain,” 15-year-old Tessie struggles with the loss of her father and the demands of her mother as she navigates the rocky terrain of adolescence. In “Monsters,” middle-aged Maury has to choose between a new relationship and protecting the well-being of his 4-year-old ‘daughter.’ The stories are influenced by the Western realism of Maile …

The Saints Of Banias, Jennifer Maritza Mccauley

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is a novel set in a fictional slavetown during the Reconstruction Era. The work seeks to blend myth, magic, and history to create a world that is both believable and otherworldly. The novel follows Beah, an ex-slave girl travelling to the town of Banias in hopes of finding her mother; Prophet Moon, an itinerant vision-seer who offers to help Beah with her goal; and the founder of the town, Claude Banias, who struggles to protect Banias from bloodthirsty radicals. As the characters’ lives intertwine, they face more challenges and secrets.

THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is loosely …

Haiti, 1965 - A Novel, Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

HAITI, 1965 is a historical novel set in Haiti where a struggling taxi driver, Raymond L’Eveillé, struggles to provide for his family under the rule of the infamous dictator François Duvalier Sr.

Raymond’s brother Nicolas, a professor and attorney, lives a more luxurious lifestyle, and both brothers are at odds over finances. When Nicolas decides to write a book about the crimes committed by the government, the inevitable happens. The brutal Tonton Macoutes militia raid his home and find notes that are as evidence enough to send him to Haiti's most notorious gulag of the era, Fort Dimanche, It will …

Dear Little Me: A Response To My Former Self, Carly Steele

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DEAR LITTLE ME: A RESPONSE TO MY FORMER SELF is a 180-page memoir in which the adult self at age twenty-three responds to the diary entries and writings of the younger version of herself. The original diary entries, which were written from 2001 to 2004, feature the typical troubles of a middle school girl: crushes, cliques, and puberty. However, the diary entries also explore darker events such as September 11, divorce, bullying, and self-image issues. When the adult “me” re-read these diaries, I felt a strong desire to respond to my former self, offering her advice and encouragement, both serious …

Dictionary Of Storms, Marci Calabretta

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

DICTIONARY OF STORMS is a collection of poetry that explores the dynamics of one family through their son’s absence. Using recurring images of skin, water, dragonflies, and pearls, the poems examine distance and absence, wanderlust and filial obligation from different family members’ perspectives. Desires are sloughed off, replaced by new ones, re-cultivated as mythos.

The architecture of many individual poems, and the collection as a whole, are structured by meditative lyricism reminiscent of Li-Young Lee. Robert Hass’s poems and translations serve as a model for articulating both the difficulty and beauty of longing. Personae such as “Admonishing Brother Returns as …

The Lines We Crossed, Jane Deon

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

THE LINES WE CROSSED is a historical novel set in Umbria, Italy from 1943-1944. One October morning, Emilia Testadura awakes to find the Nazis have arrived in her village. Major Christoph Strauss presses Emilia into service as housekeeper for the soldiers who now occupy an abandoned palazzo in the village. As the stakes and complications rise in the war throughout winter and spring, so they do for Emilia. Brutal reinforcements arrive and conditions become very dangerous. Emilia realizes she is falling in love with Major Strauss. She learns secrets that change her view of her deceased father and herself. That …

Grey Slate, Brittany R. Szabo

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

GREY SLATE is a collection of poems that focuses on the natural world in order to explore the mysteries of life with the intent to create a meditation on what it means to be a human being interacting with this world. Inspired by John Keats’ theory of Negative Capability, GREY SLATE does not seek to explain, but to dwell in the mysteries it explores. The poems are tied together through similar images or ideas in order to mimic the way the mind works as it jumps from thought to thought. GREY SLATE also mixes different types of poems: from haiku …

Visitations: A Novel, Joseph Anderson

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

VISITATIONS, a novel, explores themes of haunting and desire in New York City, in two time periods. The modern-day action focuses on Alan Philips whose wife, Beth, has recently died. His efforts to resume a normal life are sabotaged by what he comes to believe is her ghost. In the parallel story, in 1924, Oliver Nathan Blackburn, a pulp writer, in the midst of a breakdown writes a story that may play a role in Beth’s death.

VISITATIONS presents Alan and Oliver’s perspectives in third person narration, so that the reader is both close to and may question the subjectivity …

Loose Ends, Julio Machado

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loose Ends is a collection of lyric and narrative poems that explores the multiple terrains of identity—individual, cultural, and historical. The poems embrace the essential incoherence of the self, resisting monolithic identity in favor of a multi-faceted, historically complex, imagistic rendering of the inner life. At its heart, the collection seeks to grapple with the gravitas of living: the continual assault of history and nature on human agency, the staggering context of the universe as a backdrop for communal and individual struggle. While single poems may only touch briefly or incompletely on these themes, the collection as a whole presents …

Life Is Good-If But Briefly, Tim P. Curtis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

LIFE IS GOOD—IF BUT BRIEFLY is a contemporary, satirical novel written in the third person. Walter Dingles, the story’s protagonist, is an introspective twenty-two-year-old with a knack for screwing things up. After finishing college, Walter realizes he’s emotionally ill prepared to face the world on his own. He moves back home vowing to get his shit together. He lands a job at his old high school, but his efforts are exacerbated when his grandfather’s porn collection ends up in the principal’s office, he unknowingly begins taking his mother’s estrogen supplements, and family secrets come to the fore. In the end, …