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Full-Text Articles in Creative Writing
A Citrus Wildfire, Mark Anthony Lopez
A Citrus Wildfire, Mark Anthony Lopez
Theses and Dissertations
An American Dream forged by greed. A family caught in the middle of a race war. A young boy trying to learn how to be a man. A Citrus Wildfire is a fiction novella that tells the story of a Mexican family struggling to survive in the Rio Grande Valley after their only source of income burns down, and the lengths they must go to in order to get the life they were promised.
A small preface from the author proceeds the work. This novella is inspired by many different authors and educators, as well as the Rio Grande Valley …
In His Wake: Applying Life's Truths In Fiction, Joseph M. Balderas
In His Wake: Applying Life's Truths In Fiction, Joseph M. Balderas
Theses and Dissertations
The culmination of the creative work and its introduction attempt to delve into the psyche of what it means to lose someone you love. The screenplay explores the grieving process and the coping mechanisms that accompanies it, with an examination on how far some people are willing to go for closure.
To reach my conclusions, I draw from my own life experience, the experiences of others, and a fine amount of research. It also means to shed light on the impermanent mental strain that chaperon’s grief.
Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Empowerment Through Mimicry, Daniel Garcia
Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Empowerment Through Mimicry, Daniel Garcia
Theses and Dissertations
My collection is a polythetic assortment of poetry, prose poetry, monologue and drama that serves as a polyglottic exhibition of empowerment through mimicry. Like a mockingbird, whom the Aztecs call “cenzontle” in their Nahuatl tongue, my writer’s voice is polyvoiced. I include in this collection an eclectic variety of voices: personas, languages, forms, styles, and identities—often mixing them, in part to entertain and in part to challenge my boundaries as a writer, to stretch my vocal chords, so to speak, but also in part to challenge the lingering prejudice against such mestizaje—or meeting and mixing of cultures (and also voices)—and …
From A Long Line Of Thieves, Lucinda Zamora-Wiley
From A Long Line Of Thieves, Lucinda Zamora-Wiley
Theses and Dissertations
This is a work of original creative writing, containing works of poetry, prose poems, flash non-fiction, and personal essays. The primary subject areas include family relations after PTSD, love, interracial struggles within marriage and family, pride of place--including Texas and the United States, and poetic/artistic inspirations that influenced the author.
A New American Fiction: Personal Essays, Observances, And Interviews, Daniel M. Mendoza
A New American Fiction: Personal Essays, Observances, And Interviews, Daniel M. Mendoza
Theses and Dissertations
This work consists of essays on the author’s personal development as a writer. It also contains reflections on the state of contemporary American and Mexican-American fiction. The author seeks to illustrate the relevance of certain writers affiliated with working-class fiction, a genre of contemporary American fiction that blends social, political, and aesthetic values into their novels and short stories.
Included in this work are also a number of conversations with writers of working-class fiction. In these conversations the author engages other writers in dialogue that further illuminates the author’s development of his creative identity as a cultural and literary writer.
Historias De Psicopatas Desidiosos Y Solitarios En La Frontera, Silvia H. Vera-Huesca
Historias De Psicopatas Desidiosos Y Solitarios En La Frontera, Silvia H. Vera-Huesca
Theses and Dissertations
This thesis is a collection of short stories and poems. The first part focuses on short-fictional stories based on the problematic violence trending in the border between Mexico and the United States, triggering psychosis, sloppiness and loneliness to the characters. The second part of this project includes poetry in prose, based on my own psychotic, sloppiness and lonely experiences living in the border for the past few years.
Learning To Speak: Poems, Celina A. Gomez
Learning To Speak: Poems, Celina A. Gomez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This project is a collection of poetry that weaves together past, present, and the hopes of a future that causes change. It is set in South Texas and discusses borders spanning from social class, language, and identity. The collection primarily focuses on the Chican@ voice and the shame that comes from the borderlands. I have drawn from the Rio Grande Valley as a source of inspiration while also using family experiences, my own reaction to shame, and the possibilities of an empowered voice.
Transylvania, Texas, Joshua Murray
Transylvania, Texas, Joshua Murray
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This thesis is a collection of poems about my experience realizing that I was transgender, working through my feelings prior to this realization, the moment of realization, and the fallout that comes afterword. It begins by dealing with the feelings of depression and alienation that accompany unrecognized feelings of gender dysphoria, examining feelings of disconnect from the body, the mind, and everyday life. It builds to the slow realization of being a trans woman, a woman taught to be a man by society, and the joy and relief that comes with that epiphany. Finally it looks at what comes afterword, …
I Won't Die, Azael Villarreal
I Won't Die, Azael Villarreal
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Sid is 22, and like the rest of the men in his family, he will die when he is 24. Sid will take his brother’s identity, money, and college degree to get ahead in life before death takes it away again. Sid will travel to the other side of the world in pursuit of adventure and meaning. In the final stages of his short life, Sid will try to make sense of his curse, and try to figure out what is left worth pursuing.
Finding No One, Sarah Owen
Finding No One, Sarah Owen
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Finding No one is a Non-Fiction creative writing piece written around one young woman’s desire to overcome obstacles in order to prove she is the complete opposite of her enemies: strong, determined, and brave. The main character shares her story of surviving childhood abuse, how she used Anorexia to cope with the aftermath, and what it took to become someone with a desire to fight for a future. The writer has taken the readers directly into vivid scenes of abuse and the innermost thoughts of self-loathing, refusing to hide any secrets. Finding No One explicitly shares details of therapy and …
Stolen Youth: A Co-Authored Memoir, Jeanilee A. Garza
Stolen Youth: A Co-Authored Memoir, Jeanilee A. Garza
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This literary work of creative nonfiction qualifies under the literary genre of memoir, as a co-authored memoir. While the work incorporates the practices of both memoir and testimonio, the classification as a co-authored memoir recognizes a collaboration between the writer and the individual interviewed for this piece. “Stolen Youth: A Co-Authored Memoir” presents nine chapters and an epilogue, and is part of a larger creative work. The piece narrates the life of, Cirano “Cid” Lagunas, III, a dear friend who offered me the opportunity to convey his personal experiences through memoir. His memoir begins at the age of 12, following …
I,Metaboy, Mario Leal Jr.
I,Metaboy, Mario Leal Jr.
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
I,metaboy is a stage play about a young homosexual couple, one a soldier and the other a writer, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s and the struggles they encounter in their relationship when the soldier marries a woman to pass in the military. The story follows in the tradition of other Queer literatures that explore the state of the trope of the homosexual male within his given historical period. This historically places the identity. I,metaboy is based on an amalgamation of imagery from a variety of media (theatre, literature, TV, film, social policy, historical texts, myths, …
Living In The Outskirts, Thomas De La Cruz
Living In The Outskirts, Thomas De La Cruz
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Living in the Outskirts is a bildungsroman collection of short stories of a young Chicano growing up in the Rio Grande Valley town of Elsa, Texas. In the critical introduction of this thesis, I discuss how my stories challenge traditional Chicano/a cultural ideals of masculinity, language, class and nationality. Included in my introduction are other Chicano/a writers who engaged with these Chicano/a cultural ideals, and who I find myself in conversation with through my work. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of the “New Mestiza Consciousness,” I show how the protagonist of my stories gradually changes throughout the collection and adopts …
Angel In Skirts, Mary Ruth Chen
Angel In Skirts, Mary Ruth Chen
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Angels In Skirts is a memoir composed of organic memories thematically linked through essays and chapters. I re-create the story of a young girl’s vivid and imaginative way of seeing life, the intensity of her emotions and what it feels like to desperately want to control men by handing over her body. Highlighted is a discussion of the struggle I had with labeling my work nonfiction. I also explore the effective use of parataxis in dialogue and the effect structure has on the narrative arc and characters in a work. I discuss my process when deciding on a form for …
[No Titles In Utopia], Esteban J. Rodriguez
[No Titles In Utopia], Esteban J. Rodriguez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
The intended purpose of this thesis it to compose a collection of poetry consisting of four sections with each section containing between four to ten poems. The poems themselves will range between one to three pages and will be divided according to their particular subject matter, such as, but not limited, to childhood reflection, father-son relationships, the estrangement from suburbia and modernized America, and ekphrasis-inspired pieces that weave both art and narrative elements together. My main goal with this collection is to write poems in a clear straightforward manner without obscuring language, and constructing persona narratives that invite the reader …
Time And Fortune, Tiffany C. Anderson
Time And Fortune, Tiffany C. Anderson
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Time and Fortune, a graphic novel script, takes the true story of John Harrison’s competition for the longitude prize, as told by Dava Sobel, and seeks the changes that could have culminated had Harrison sought other avenues for his product. Considering his judge was his competitor, if Harrison made a secret copy of H-4, a watch that accurately holds the time from homeport, and gave it to a sailor invested in its success, naval military power could have changed today’s world as we know it. Imagining that John Harrison changed one small decision in his life, this storyline sets a …
Another Sort Of Life: A Novel, Andrew S. Hollinger
Another Sort Of Life: A Novel, Andrew S. Hollinger
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
In the critical introduction of this thesis, I examine the academic and creative impulses that helped me to complete this novel. In particular, I detail my seemingly nonlinear course of study as I planned, wrote, and reflected on this novel draft. This work required significant research and study outside the field of creative writing: health care systems, cancer, shame, vulnerability, guilt. I discuss at length the processes by which I became knowledgeable of these subjects, and how even after the first draft of the creative work was completed, I continued to create a more nuanced and sophisticated concept of my …
The Last Orchard, Caleb David Camacho
The Last Orchard, Caleb David Camacho
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
The Last Orchard is a screenplay about two rival groups of ten-year-olds in 1989 Pharr, Texas. Their elementary school conflicts create a neighborhood war within their mobile home park, coinciding with the entire park's wide eviction and land ownership crisis. The story is written with a mythic fiction approach – a method I learned through Carl Jung's and Joseph Campbell's works on archetypes, mythology, and the hero's journey; it is a practical tool for storytelling. The Last Orchard is based on Homer's Iliad: the Trojan War, its heroes, and gods. Some plays and numerous films have their mythic counterparts, along …
Mariguano, Juan Ochoa
Mariguano, Juan Ochoa
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Mariguano is a fictional account of a young man growing up in a family in whose patriarch is a Mexican drug lord. The narrator, el Johnny, and his father, Don Julio, crisscross through Mexico with total disregard for distance or time bribing comandantes and stopping turf wars all in preparation for their next score. The novel culminates in Don Julio’s attempt to fix the 1988 Presidential election in Mexico. Don Julio’s son, El Johnny, lives to tell the tale of the rise and fall of his father’s drug smuggling empire and of the destruction of his family. The events in …
And They Were Thirteen, Daniel Sanchez
And They Were Thirteen, Daniel Sanchez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
In the critical introduction to my thesis, I explore how the progression of my creative work straddled the gap between fiction and nonfiction and how, in trying to make the creative work a combination of both, I failed to make it work as successfully as I could have as a narrative. I then segue into my research on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth and how it has even affected narratives focusing on teachers. I then explain how elements present in my work coincide with aspects of the monomyth. Because of the prevalence of the monomyth in American pop culture, I make an …
“Oye: Words Are One Big Mind” A Collection Of Poems, Samuel Arizpe
“Oye: Words Are One Big Mind” A Collection Of Poems, Samuel Arizpe
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
Oye: Words Are One Big Mind. A Collection of Poems comprises forty poems arranged into three sections. It is preceded by a critical introduction in which the author discusses: 1) the childhood provenance of his love for language; 2) how his Latino linguistic, religious and cultural roots from South Texas set him on the path of poetic discovery and contextualized his poetic style 3) the influence of early Chican@ poets upon his poetry; 4) commonalities of Latin American poetry in his own work; 5) the convergence of spiritual, social, religious, mystical, and universal issues in his work.
“Breakfast Shots” And Other Stories: Collected Fiction Of Joseph D. Haske, Joseph D. Haske
“Breakfast Shots” And Other Stories: Collected Fiction Of Joseph D. Haske, Joseph D. Haske
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
The following thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing consists of two parts. The first part contains five excerpts from a short story cycle, tentatively entitled Breakfast Shots. The second part includes experimentation with the short story form, including the noir-influenced Bloqueo and two minimalist stories derived from this piece. Several stories included in this thesis have been published in journals such as Boulevard, Fiction International, and Dark Sky. The rest are currently under consideration for various journals and anthologies.
Tierra Sagrada: Stories, Jose Rene Martinez
Tierra Sagrada: Stories, Jose Rene Martinez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This thesis consists of fourteen stories and a critical introduction. Each story is set in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas and features Mexican American characters. The critical introduction discusses the history of the Rio Grande Valley and traces my development as a writer. It also shows the influences Mexican American writers such as Américo Paredes have had on my work.
My Made For Tv Life Or How We Survived My Psycho-Killer Dad, Sarah Beth Mcdonald
My Made For Tv Life Or How We Survived My Psycho-Killer Dad, Sarah Beth Mcdonald
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
The critical afterword discusses my struggles writing a memoir after a lifetime of primarily fictional influences, the ethics of truth and memory, and my attempts to find a style that would do justice to my mother s struggles. The memoir began its life as a portrayal of my mother's story, but in the end was the story of a girl growing up with the knowledge of her father's attempted murder, and the strength of her mother's guidance. My story.
After “Borderlands” The Making Of An Academic Chola: Poems, Veronica Sandoval
After “Borderlands” The Making Of An Academic Chola: Poems, Veronica Sandoval
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This poetry collection is by a Mexican American spoken word, performance poet, Lady Mariposa, from Sullivan City turned Chican@ feminist after coming to terms with her mestizaje through Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza. In Lady Mariposa’s journey as an “Academic Chola,” the term “chola” articulates her Chican@ identity and creates a new space in academia by using “chola” as a hybrid of identity and style in the formation of her poetics. Her poetry can also be called pocho, pocha, Tex-Mex and code switches. She is inspired by Chican@ literature and history, lowriders, cholo culture, cholas, jazz, hip …
The Ripening Of Mangos, Katherine Hoerth
The Ripening Of Mangos, Katherine Hoerth
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This project is a collection of poems which draw influence from Romantic, confessional, and post-modern poetry movements, and can most accurately be described as Confessionalistic, though they are resistant to categorization. The poems function to dismantle archetypal definitions of feminine identity, and instead aim to depict identity to be fluid and multifaceted.
The Ripening of Mangos is divided into four sections. The first section deconstructs the 'angel' or 'virgin' archetype, while the second deconstructs the 'monster' or 'whore' archetype. Section three includes voices of procreation, and functions to complicate the image of 'the mother.' The last section, Transplanting, shows gendered …
Awake: A Young Adult Novel In Verse, Minerva Vasquez
Awake: A Young Adult Novel In Verse, Minerva Vasquez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This project is a manuscript for a YA novel written in verse and represents the type of YA literature I hope to publish after graduating. Awake chronicles the story of Alejandra de Luna, a high school student from the Rio Grande Valley who must come to terms with an abusive home situation, while at the same time struggling to find her place and her voice as an artist, writer, daughter, and young Latina. To complicate her world more, she begins to dream of Tenochtitlan, the former capital of the Aztec Empire. She experiences Aztec culture as one of patriarchy and …
“Combustible Sinners” And Other Stories, Myra Ivette Infante
“Combustible Sinners” And Other Stories, Myra Ivette Infante
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This is a collection of six short stories with a critical introduction. The characters in the short stories are all connected (sometimes remotely) to a small, Mexican, Pentecostal church in South Texas. The critical introduction explores the religious background and evolution as a Chicana writer of Myra Ivette Infante.
Disciples Of Vu, Leif Carl Behmer
Disciples Of Vu, Leif Carl Behmer
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
This project is in the design of high-fantasy sword and sorcery, wherein the concepts of mana and magic are employed as expressions of virtue to highlight contemporary issues of cultural identity and belonging. This project is also an experiment to attract a readership of non-traditional fantasy readers into the genre by creating, rather than assuming, a fantastic world context using immersive rhetorical techniques.
This project in of itself is not so much a re-invention of the traditional adventure quest as it is an exploration of its post-Tolkien form (the attraction of mythology and folklore, the narrative use of prophecy), and …
Between Silver And Glass, Catherine V. Lopez
Between Silver And Glass, Catherine V. Lopez
Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA
The critical introduction explores my stories, as well as my influences, and ultimate desires for said stories. The stories themselves explore a variety of topics. They are stories about growing up. They are stories about being a girl. They are stories about the magical world we live in. They are the sort of stories I'd like to read if I ever have free time again.