Award Date
May 2019
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
Anne Stevens
Fourth Committee Member
Erika Abad
Fifth Committee Member
Steven Sexton
Number of Pages
82
Abstract
My thesis manuscript Forget Me Not & Other Stories is composed of several short stories and the first section of a novel. The first drafts of these stories were written during my first and second years in the program while my primary focus this semester has been the novel. I believe this thesis reflects my growth as both a writer and critical reader of fiction as a result of my time here. Much of the work included here began as assignments for a creative class, including an imitation of Marilyn Robinson’s’ Gilead written for Professor Doug Unger’s Forms of Fiction. The first ideas for the ending novel began in Dr. Maile Chapman’s course on crafting ambiguity in fiction. My work interrogates the intersections of my identity as a white, queer Cherokee citizen living in an imperialist state that continues to actively colonize sovereign indigenous nations and other disenfranchised communities of color. Over the last several semesters, my focus as a writer has shifted to explore the complex colonial hierarchies imposed on queerness and indigeneity using surreal and fantastical elements. In the opening story a white-passing Cherokee woman copes with her absent father’s return from the dead, and the main character in the novel excerpt faces the psychological and emotional effects of feeling uprooted and displaced through the metaphor of jumping through space and time. My goal is for this creative work to engage with difficult truths, particularly dialogues that surround conflicting intersectional identities and internalized racism and queerphobia within marginalized communities. The stories and excerpt contained here are all very much a work in-progress. Thank you for reading!
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing
File Format
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Wilson, Zach, "Forget Me Not & Other Stories" (2019). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 3700.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/15778571
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/