Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons^™

Before You Knew Me, Isabel Ontiveros

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis is a collection of short stories titledBefore You Knew Me. The collection centers on people whose lives have been affected by addiction or loneliness. Families attempt to get through adversities and piece together the fragments of a life they once had. Happiness for both the adults and the children depends on their ability to resist the cycle of dysfunction and the pressures of their peers.

The collection begins with a Gothic story about an abduction. My story "Goldfish" was inspired by Joyce Carol Oates's "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," where a young girl meets a …

Secondhand City: Stolen Stories From La Limonada, Byron José Sun

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Roboton, Jupa and Calicas have just been drafted by the city of La Limonada to petrol, to rob, to intimidate, to extort, to kill and when necessary to protect those citizens that need it; as their crime spree progresses their tactics and abilities improve shaping them into criminal machines. The three new criminals will be tasked with the reality of destroying people's lives in order to insure La Limonada maintains its dominion over every citizen by controlling every aspect of their past, present and future. Many of those citizens are clueless on how they are controlled; it isn't until their …