Fiction Commons^™

A Tres Pasos De La Muerte, Samuel Temblador

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

"A Tres Pasos de la Muerte" tells the story of a son of Mexican immigrants and his search for his roots. Here, Temblador attempts to communicate a bicultural experience through the frame of border literature (Literatura Fronteriza) born out of the intersection between Mexican and American culture.

Applications For Dummies, Carla M. Sanchez

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This poem discusses the overwhelming pressure that is put on students to justify their right to be admitted into universities or to receive scholarships based on their extracurricular activities. Many working-class, first-generation college students are unable to participate in organizations and programs that offer students a more well-rounded college experience. This can lead first-gen students, like the author, to feel isolated, inadequate, or illegitimate. "Applications for Dummies" expresses Sanchez's incessant fear that she will never be able to compete with other students who were given the opportunity to build more worldly resumes, despite her strong academic commitment and intellectual potential.

It's Not Just A Leave, Genesis L. Montalvo

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

In this piece, the author sets out to explore the first-generation college identity through a gothic lens. In the early stages of this project, Montalvo had considered doing research on narratives from other first-gen college students as a way to trace the uncanny and the abject in their experiences. However, as she began reflecting on her own personal history, she realized that in a matter of only two years she had already experienced moments of distance, uncanniness, and confusion, which are recorded here. In presenting these installments in non-chronological order, Montalvo intends to insert a gothic element of disorder, which …

Flashlight, Min-Jung Kim

First-Gen Voices: Creative and Critical Narratives on the First-Generation College Experience

This poem illustrates the struggle of an undergraduate first-generation college student who knew little about the first-gen identity or the experiences she would encounter until she became a First To Go Scholar at Loyola Marymount University. The poet represents the First To Go Program as a flashlight that has helped her to navigate a once dark and unfamiliar environment.

Volume 15, Issue 1: Full Text

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No abstract provided.

Samplings

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No abstract provided.

A Pasture At Twilight, Gloria Novak

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No abstract provided.

Poker Club, Harry Ames

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Ward Number Ten, John H. Spears

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Most of the men on ward ten had been brought in the evening before. They were engaged in adjusting themselves to another hospital of the chain of field, evacuation and general hospitals stretched around the globe...

Havana Whisky Run, G. Udell

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Part of my period of service was spent with the Army Air Forces Air Transport Command. The mission of the Air Transport Command was explained somewhat by its name. We transported anything and practically everything which had to be delivered in a hurry to some place on one of our many battle fronts. Our personnel strength was maintained at a very high level because of the fact that we were called upon to transport almost unlimited amounts of cargo at unscheduled times. Naturally, our entire group was rarely if ever functioning all at the same time, and so there were …

Developing Composition In Photography, Charles Shaw

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Most amateur photographers will approach the subject of composition with fear and trembling. Probably the necessity for it in pictures has been stressed to the amateur since that first day he took his first picture, but a coherent grasp of the subject has eluded him. However, good composition is like good taste, based on simple principles and common sense.

Island Magnificent, Ed Lewis

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The smooth, turquoise waves of the Pacific come speeding up the even coral runways and fling themselves, as if filled with exhaustion, on the glistening white sands of the beach. Graceful palm trees, pregnant with coconuts, stride down to the water's edge and cast their shadowy silhouettes on the blue glass of the lagoon.

July Comes To Hope, Betty Blades

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There aren't many towns smaller than Hope. It's just about as small as a town can be and still be called a town, but it is typically Hoosier from the top of the shiny silver water tower to the green tufts shooting through the cracks in the sidewalks around the Square. It lies in an area of large, prosperous farms just south of the point where a small meandering creek called Haw-creek crosses State Road 9. The town is surrounded by rich pastures and tall, golden corn fields, with an occasional wood lot dotting the landscape.

Charley: Child Of Fate, William T. Edwards

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CHARLEY was getting on in years when I met him. We took the same plane to Whitehorse where we were to work on the construction of a refinery, and there we were both assigned to the same crew of electricians...

The Old Soldier, George Fuller

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The old soldier asks very little from the world.

He fought and died

And asks only to be free

To choose his private drive,

To determine its length and breadth,

And to enforce his own speed.

And then he laughs at his own absurdity.

Meeting, Mitzi Graham

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I was waiting for a train when I saw them-the young woman and the child. They were standing just a little a~art from the others as if they were a little shy-perhaps, a little frightened. Two petite red bows clung precariously to the ends of two ash blond pigtails that protruded at a rakish angle from under the child's bonnet. Her pixy face and heavily lashed blue eyes were shining with excitement.

A Mirror For Students, George E. Traylor

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STUDENTS in universities and colleges are there for many reasons. To get an education in its broadest sense is too often not chief among these reasons. Sometimes it is possible to determine the purpose a student has for being in college in a matter of minutes, and in other cases, close association with the student must be maintained over a long period of time before it is possible to determine what his aims and expectations are with relation to his college life. Often students are not certain within their own minds just what reasons they have for being in school. …

Lost Goal, Joann-Lee Johnson

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I explored the caverns of my mind;

The chambers of my soul.

Hoping to find a single path

Leading to my goal.

Smart Fly, Donald H. Emrich

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SLOWLY and carefully I studied the signature sprawling lazily across the bottom of the page in grandiose style, so typical of Latin penmanship. Brushing aside an inquisitive fly, I reread the note and pondered at length upon its awkward phrasing. "Yes," I said, at last addressing the buzzing marauder, :'Carlos is licking his wounds, all right." It was all between the lines, his strained gaiety, a vain attempt to disguise the frustration, the bitter disappointment that was gnawing at his heart. Of course, the question that persisted in bothering me was whether his simple melancholy was justifiable. From the sidelines …

Flight 501, George Fullen

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THE African sun was excessively brilliant and hot as Jack and I struggled toward the Operations Buildings, carrying his bulging and unwieldy barracks bag between us. We dropped the bag in front of the unlovely red building with a gasp of relief. Jack mopped his face and tugged at the necktie which he was so unaccustomed to wearing. "I'm damned if I don't choose a cool day the next time I leave North Africa," he said. "You're luckier than me," I said. "It'll certainly be a cold day in July when I leave this place."

Schizophrenia, George Fullen

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In a slattern country of pond and paradox,

He is a stem resisting the most violent winds,

But whose dead roots prevent the flow of the sap of life;

He is a sterile reed standing in fertile soil.

Alan Takes A Wife, Marjorie Little

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THE Dobbinses never had seemed to belong to Wayneboro society. Their children had always been my biggest problems in grade school, and scarcely a year went by that I didn't gain a new Dobbins while I still had one to cope with. Some of them could not help being problem children. They should not have come to school at all, for I didn't have either the time or the training to help their slow moving minds. Others seemed bright enough, but they were indifferent to school and left it any time a better occupation offered itself, perhaps to work in …

The Ant-Hill, Joann-Lee Johnson

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No abstract provided.

The Long Journey, James Salee

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THE boy stood near the entrance to the club-car and looked at the people. And the people who stirred in the smoke were like people in a dream...

The Mad Russian, George Fullen

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The Russian composer bravely sings

Mad melodies on ranting strings,

Inspires us to the passionate stage,

And leaves us while we turn the page...

Sonnet 29, Allyn Wood

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THE boy Argus, who is nineteen, with palette colors in the carriers of his fingers, turns back to the house as if to make a last precautionary round before a journey. Instead he has decided to stay. He leaves his belongings in the debris of the hall. A cat from the end of the hall peers and they exchange reserves across silence heavy but for a hum, compoundly powerful and accustomed, like a thousand cats purring, or as a tornado may sound to those it has left behind, with implication eternal, both retrospective and ominous; from the core of which …

The Man With The Loud Voice, Loren Moore

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WAR had been declared about one year, I guess; anyway, the first killed - in - action notice had been received in Cripton, Indiana, and. the news shocked the whole county seat for that Halen boy was a good-natured lad who had married the Foster girl. It was a cold Saturday morning when we first heard of it and hardly anything else was discussed at the dinner table. Father was angry that we had ever got in the war in the first place saying that it was a shame that fine young man like the Halen boy should die for …

Front Matter

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No abstract provided.

Digital Demonstrations: Examinations Of Protests And Politics In Cory Doctorow’S Young Adult Fiction, Jacob Brown

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies (2015-2021)

Within this paper, I intend to examine the manner by which author and blogger Cory Doctorow utilizes complex themes of digital labor exploitation and intellectual property law within his young adult fiction in order to bring about positive social change, with particular attention paid to the 2008 novel Little Brother and its 2013 sequel Homeland, the 2010 novel For the Win, the 2012 novel Pirate Cinema, and 2014’s In Real Life, a graphic novel written by Doctorow and illustrated by Jen Wang. Throughout Doctorow’s realistic depictions of slightly-fictionalized versions of contemporary life and embellishments of near-future …

Volume 14, Issue 4: Full Issue

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No abstract provided.