Creative Writing Commons^™

From My Kitchen Window: Reflections And Essays Of A Border Crisis, Melissa Guerra

Theses and Dissertations

Memories and encounters of a life long border resident during the ongoing immigration crisis experienced in the Rio Grande Valley from 2017-2020. Thesis includes published essays that featuring interviews with migrants at the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley Humanitarian Respite Center.

Birdcage, Mirella Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

Birdcage is a coming of age story. It is, ultimately, a story about a young woman dealing with issues that she is now barely confronting, and with the help of positive outside influences, comes to accept herself and continues her path with a new perspective. There are prevalent themes such as mental illness, sexual and romantic identity, and the confrontation of toxic parental roles and how it can affect a child as they grow up. The purpose of this Critical Introduction of Birdcage is to explain my goals and purpose with this story, as well as to explain certain themes …

It Must Have Been Your Eyes, Christian Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

This fiction book entails the story of a Mexican orphan girl, Mariana, who is propelled on to a journey to the U.S. along with her mysterious ability to see the future in people’s eyes. Her plight lands her on a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children in Texas where she is forced to confront her fears and grow. In this surreal story that is based on true events, our times are reflected and even our future

The Wind Still Blows: Poems, Sarah Alicia Solis

Theses and Dissertations

The Wind Still Blows: Poems is a collection of autobiographical poems and lyric essays that explore my journey with faith. This collection reveals the life of a young woman learning to meld Chicana feminist ideas and Christian belief. With regards to this introduction, the first-person “I” will be used to denote specific craft choices and critical frameworks that I, the writer, used within the collection, and third-person references to “the speaker” refer to the constructed narrator described in the poems. In this collection, the speaker offers up a history with anxiety disorders, fraught relationships with male figures, developing into an …

Juntas: Toget(Her), Karina Flores

Theses and Dissertations

Juntas will follow the journey of Pilar Nieto and Vanessa Delgado, two young girls on the precipice of discovering themselves amid trying times in their lives. Pilar’s family is a traditional Mexican family with traditional values. Vanessa’s only family is her brother Frankie—who takes it upon himself to raise her with the same values he was brought up with before the sudden death of their parents. When Vanessa moves to Eagle Pass, she meets Pilar, and what starts out as a friendship slowly grows into something neither one of them could anticipate happening. Upon discovery of their relationship, they will …

The Uses, Understandings, And Values Of Student Strucutral Assisting Metatexts In College First Year Composition Courses, Joseph Ryan Dundovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a look into the perceptions, views, and experiences of first-year composition students into being offered a large amount of choice/agency in their major summative writing projects, but also accountability and guidance during their process in the form of resources called ‘structural assisting metatexts’. The major question that guided this study is the following:

- How do first year composition students use, understand, and value forms of structural assisting metatexts during the writing/creation process?

The two parts of the writing process that were specifically researched in conjunction with their correlating metatexts are the topic selection (with the Proposal …

Female Torture Poetry: Petrarchan Love And Carpe Diem, Luke C. Widlund

Theses and Dissertations

My MA thesis examines sixteenth and seventeeth-century lyric poetry by the male poets Sir Philip Sidney, John Donne, Thomas Carew, and Andrew Marvell. These poets make use of different lyric genres and forms, including Petrarchan sonnets and carpe diem arguments, to torture the purported female mistresses. A close examination of specific works, including Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, Donne’s “The Apparition”, Carew’s “Song: Persuasion to Enjoy”, and Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” demonstrates that they all share a preoccupation with weaponizing poetry in their depiction of mistresses and female lovers in pain and punishment. Poetry functions as a tool for imposing …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Espejismo: Imagen En Poemas, Mariela Cedillo

Theses and Dissertations

Espejismo: Imagen en Poemas is a collection of poetry that explores the idea that art – creating poetry can heal trauma wounds. This collection not only tackles the trauma of sexual assault, but the effects of mental health and its recovery. It is meant to portray a full story of womanhood, and all that that embodies. This collection explores these topics through the lens of personal narrative and experience through various poetry forms.

Willing Beasts, Jose Lujan

Theses and Dissertations

Willing Beasts is a poetry collection that consists of the title poem then is divided into three sections which are named Willing Beasts of Rebellion, Willing Beasts of Desire and Willing Beasts of Groove. The first section titled Willing Beasts of Rebellion consists of poems which are of a rebellious and protest in nature. The second section titled Willing Beasts of Desire consists of poems that more personal in nature and reveal more about my life. The third section titled Willing Beasts of Groove consists of poems which are inspired by the songwriters that have influenced me as …

Shift: A Brujo Story, Mark A. Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

In the distant future, a viral agent that transforms people into monsters has overrun the world. Metropolis domains now dominate the United States, using large walls to keep the dangers from entering inside. But safety is not always a guarantee. A man named Nathan uses his ability as a shape-shifting folkloric creature to make a living as a mercenary for hire in the city he lives in.

Nathan also struggles with his inner turmoil of attempting to live in a society that does not accept him while trying to deal with his past trauma that drives his life. But when …

Poser: The Nexus Of Chicanx And Punk Cinema, Christian Martinez

Theses and Dissertations

By bridging together formal characteristics from Chicanx and Punk cinema, my screenplay “Poser” follows the traditions of many filmmakers, including Jim Mendiola, Efrain Gutierrez, Luis Valdez, and Alex Cox. This thesis first distinguishes the traits that characterize each individual style, followed by the films that inspired my script, to finally how these techniques fit within my own work.

The creative decisions in my screenplay are thus examined through a lens informed by the underlying value of writing a story about marginalized segments of society. Additionally, I offer a close analysis behind the restrained approach of my story, along with the …

Pebblechild, Brenda Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short stories depict life moments for people that are connected through the city of Peñitas, Texas. This manuscript begins as an origin story for the city of Peñitas. According to local historians both in the past and in present times, the city of Peñitas was founded by a priest and five other Spaniards. This idea is integrated into the storyline but with a focus on the impact of a young girl, Tala. She suffers immensely through the actions of a group she refers to as the Long Beards. She has to go through a series of discovery …

Drama Del Dia, Eleazar Zuniga Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

Drama del día is made up of short plays which will present themes and elements of life along the Rio Grande Valley border between Texas and Mexico. The plays in this work reflect the Chicano culture and attempt to touch on the various themes and conflicts people encounter on daily basis such as domestic, social, and drug cartel violence, corruption, immigration, colonialism and machismo.

Beneath The Dry Teeth Of Mountains, Susan Doherty Osteen

Theses and Dissertations

In certain pockets of rural America time functions in different measure. This collection of stories focuses on one such anomaly, the rural ranching community in northeastern New Mexico. In the shadow of ancient Volcanoes, the soil is thin, rocky, arid, but surprisingly fertile for native dry land grass. Elevation fluctuates from to 9,000 feet to less than 4000, depending on whether one is on top of a mountain or down in a canyon. It is a place where wealth is measured in cattle and land, where horses are a necessity and pressed Levis are considered Sunday dress. Life continues much …

The Youngest, Trezlen Drake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of poems that considers life in a southern Black family, memory, nostalgia, dysfunction, race and gender, and generational trauma. These poems are influenced by poetry, fiction, music, popular culture, and scholarship, each providing a different perspective on life and language to talk about that which can sometimes be unspeakable.

A recurring character in this collection is the girlchild, reminiscent of Marge Piercy’s character in “Barbie Doll.” The girlchild here is the figure of the woman or girl who experiences trauma, and what some consider to be unspeakable.

These poems are also an exploration and disruption …

Might Could, Cody Donovan Hosek

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis uses poetry to draw attention to the means in which we communicate ourselves and our experience, namely in the aftermath of loss—loss of loved ones, of a sense of home, loss of trust in the veracity of one’s own senses. While exploring these affective spaces, attention was drawn especially to the eye and the translation implicit in the mind’s work of perception. The writing process involved returning to the sites of home—the Outer Banks, the Blue Ridge mountains, Oconee county, the southern stretch of Appalachia—and it is in this dynamic geography that the images, more often natural than …

An Open Bag, Matilde Benmayor

Theses and Dissertations

What do we take with us? How much space should we leave in the bag for what we might find? This paper is a journey from under the rug and onto the pavement. Sowing spiderweb maps I try to make a new city my own.

Hey Boo, I’Ve Been Lonely. What’S Good With You?, Khari Johnson-Ricks

Theses and Dissertations

I explore the interlacing macro and micro implications of capitalism on interpersonal relationships. In an attempt to reconcile that problem I use storytelling, painting, and performance to imagine radical futures when love safety and abundance are easier to access.

Editorial Literacy:Reconsidering Literary Editing As Critical Engagement In Writing Support, Anna Cairney

Theses and Dissertations

Editing is usually perceived in the pejorative within in the literature of composition studies generally, and specifically in writing center studies. Regardless if the Writing Center serves mostly undergraduates or graduates, the word “edit” has largely evolved to a narrow definition of copyediting or textual cleanup done by the author at the end of the writing process. Inversely, in trade publishing, editors and agents work with writers at multiple stages of production, providing editorial feedback in the form of reader’s reports and letters. Editing is a rich, intellectual skill of critically engaging with another’s text. What are the implications of …

"Peel It Back Slowly" And "Rolling Right Along": A Collection Of Body Horror Stories, Vincent Manta

Theses and Dissertations

Body horror, or any sort of horror story detailing grotesque changes in one’s body, has long been considered unworthy of academic discussion and critique. It was not until recently that genres like body horror that fall into the realm of “low culture” have actually been studied seriously. The two stories in this collection enter into dialogue with modern genre, film, and gender studies in an attempt to comment on the current state of body horror and how its tropes function in modern storytelling. Focusing these stories on interpersonal relationships allows the horrors of the body to take front and center …

“Peel It Back Slowly” And “Rolling Right Along”: A Collection Of Body Horror Stories, Vincent Manta

Theses and Dissertations

Body horror, or any sort of horror story detailing grotesque changes in one’s body, has long been considered unworthy of academic discussion and critique. It was not until recently that genres like body horror that fall into the realm of “low culture” have actually been studied seriously. The two stories in this collection enter into dialogue with modern genre, film, and gender studies in an attempt to comment on the current state of body horror and how its tropes function in modern storytelling. Focusing these stories on interpersonal relationships allows the horrors of the body to take front and center …

Robert Catherine, Sarah Nelson Rupp

Theses and Dissertations

Robert Catherine is an experimental augmented reality novel engaged in the speculative realist question: What is the point to anything if everything?

A perverted and downwardly mobile Richmond millennial man quarantined because of the Coronavirus writes a series of creative non-fiction essays for his girlfriend about suicide, panic attacks, ADHD, DNA testing, capitalism, depression, and sexual repression.

Fool's Rest, Aidan Quinlan

Theses and Dissertations

The text calls itself a guide, but it is no guide. From the genre of guide, it borrows the outlines and silhouettes and lines between things and spaces and ideas. It lingers on the shadows of its subject(s); it is attentive to the periphery of its world; but it cannot take you there. There is no there. It lacks the authority of the guide; it lacks the lucidity, the efficiency, the false totality of the guide; it lacks the confidence.

The guide embodies its own anxieties. This makes sense, as its reason to exist was born on the one-way highway …

A Story About A Girl With Snakes For Hair, Kate M. Turner

Theses and Dissertations

My work is autobiographical. I use various art making processes to create a visual archive of my life. By abstracting these memories and experiences, I can examine how culture works surrounding issues of identity. This is my story.

The Program, Aaron Douglas Estrada

Theses and Dissertations

In my work, I explore the engineering of identity and socioeconomics that are programed into Black and Brown communities. I refer to this as “The Program”. The Program validates, breaks, codes, and critiques the system that divided us. The Program is identifying with the struggle of growing up in a system that is programmed to see you fail. So if you get caught up in that system it’s a natural death within the program. But you can break and make your own program. If you stick to the program.

The paper's use of language is coded. Text has been written …

Ivy Dreams On, Emily Davis

Theses and Dissertations

Ivy Dreams On is a realistic young adult novel which explores the effects of grief and trauma on adolescents through humor and non-traditional narrative. This book will appeal to readers of young and new adult, written in the spirit of Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak).

There was no mystery to Ivy’s death: G’s sister was drunk, G’s sister was high, G’s sister fell off a cliff. But when D, an ex-friend and longtime target of G’s torment, insists that there’s more to Ivy’s death, G is reluctantly moved …