Award Date
8-1-2020
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
First Committee Member
Douglas Unger
Second Committee Member
Maile Chapman
Third Committee Member
Steven Sexton
Fourth Committee Member
William Bauer
Number of Pages
63
Abstract
Sad Water and Sand began as a collection of short stories that insisted upon a more intimate connection between the individual pieces. Drawing from the novel-in-stories format perhaps best utilized by indigenous writers Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich, the narrative constitutes fragments of varying lengths interwoven to create a sense of mixed media through text and explore the boundaries of form and genre. The primary through-line follows a contemporary Dakota-American family and their experiences living in Las Vegas, a thousand miles away from their ancestral homelands, which they must return to following the death of a relative. While many of the stories center upon the youngest daughter and her perspective of events, layered alongside them are historical accounts and iterations of traditional mythology. In shifting between different points-of-view, verb tenses, and even central characters, Sad Water and Sad seeks to reflect interconnectedness as an avenue for resistance.
Keywords
Dakota; Fiction; Native American Literature; Novel
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing
File Format
File Size
3300 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Repository Citation
Rouse, Karli Tokala, "Sad Water and Sand" (2020). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 4022.
http://dx.doi.org/10.34917/22110088
Rights
IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/