Award Date
12-1-2016
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
First Committee Member
Maile Chapman
Second Committee Member
Douglas Unger
Third Committee Member
Julia Lee
Fourth Committee Member
Brandon Manning
Number of Pages
97
Abstract
“Stay Brave My Hercules” is a collection of nine original short stories separated into two sections: “Stay Brave My Hercules” and “Matsuri”.
In the first section, “Stay Brave My Hercules”, I explore the themes of hypermasculinity, loneliness, and insecurity, in particular the points in which they intersect. These stories are narrated by different male characters between the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven and who all struggle in different ways to conform to masculine norms.
In the second section, “Matsuri”, I explore the themes of family, loss, and devastation through the eyes of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. In these stories, magical realism plays a heavy role in defining familial relationships and providing a means for which love and loyalty can be expressed.
Mostly, I wanted to create compelling characters: characters who we can identify with, characters who long and love and hurt in the same ways we do, characters who stay with us after we’ve forgotten the story, characters who become so real that we wake up in the morning and wonder if they had slept well. This is what I attempt to achieve in creating this manuscript. This is why I write.
Keywords
Loneliness; Masculinity; Sexuality
Disciplines
Creative Writing
File Format
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Wang, Ernie, "Stay Brave My Hercules" (2016). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2915.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/10083231
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/