This is a collection of essays that reflects on ideas pertaining to family, politics, the environment, and identity.

This novella focuses on the lives of Walter, his mother Sabine, and his would-be love Bernadette. Walter is an awkward, unemployed thirty-year-old that still lives at home with his mother pressed into the pursuit of love by an obsession with romance novels. Walter is an outstanding cook and dishwasher but has no other notable talents. He eventually finds a job and manages to lose his virginity but changes little otherwise. The narrative is interested in the failures of family, love, and traditional societal expectations. It is interested in seeing and being seen. It is interested in a path around the conventional plot arc. Walter's Rules for Getting By wishes to disrupt the expected and the roles we often feel forced into.

My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero. Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This triggers a domino effect that leads Layla on a trail to uncover the many ways in which she has been lied to over the years and just how dangerous her family really is.

Esther Cain is living on her own for the first time, trying to make sense of a childhood as a missionary's daughter in Alaska, a past that was defined by prophecy, visions, and the voice of God as interpreted by her father. Alex Fuller is studying medicine and muddling through a relationship with his first boyfriend. But when Alex and Esther are drawn back to the mountains of South Carolina where they briefly knew each other as children, they must each confront questions of faith, sexuality, and the painful ties of family.

Illegal Immigration: Six Stories from an American Family is a collection of stories derived from and inspired by the author's personal life experiences, dreams, and family history, as a Mexican American woman. The stories also hold distinct archetypal patterns, images, storylines and symbolism due to the author's connection to the collective unconscious through meditation. The stories tell character driven stories of adversity, and the search for home, and identity by linking main characters to their family members in each story. The collection as a whole reveals generational patterns, histories and connections not only present in the matriarchal bloodline of the collection, but from one human to another. The stories beckon the reader into an alternate reality created by these archetypal patterns inherent in all humans, in an attempt to transcend genres and find a place within the psyche where anything is possible. / Illegal immigration -- Marco and Margarita -- La muerte de mi padre -- Together again -- Vivi and Ricardo -- The healer. / Department of English

In these six intertwining fictional short stories, one fateful decision ripples through the lives of multiple generations. Annie is an unmarried young mother during World War II when she leaves her young daughter in the care of a childless couple. When Annie fails to return for the child after days and then years, a new and fragile family is formed only to be tested by Annie's eventual return. The other stories in this collection follow the daughters and granddaughters who have to navigate their own lives in the shadow of this abandonment. Spanning multiple decades, Annie's decision remains a pivotal psychological scar imprinted in her descendants and those left to care for the child that she could not.

Collected Stories revolves around characters in Pennsylvania, California, and Oregon. Though the stories are not linked, the theme of displacement and abandonment are explored throughout my work. Characters are displaced, such as Vietnam veterans and Russian international students living in America. Some protagonists are displaced simply by the actions or circumstances of their parents. Such parents choose not to act as parental figures or have passed away, leaving the children to figure out their roles in their families. The children decide, essentially, how to redefine themselves.

This thesis argues that three models of trauma theory, which include traditional trauma theory, postcolonial trauma theory, and cultural trauma theory, must be joined to fully understand the trauma experienced by African Americans within the novels Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. By implementing these three theories, we can see how each novel’s main character is exploring and learning about African American trauma and better understand how an adjustment of space and time creates the possibility for the implementation of trauma theory. Each novel presents a journey, and it is through this movement through space that each character can serve as a witness to African American trauma. This is done in Morrison’s text by condensing the geographical space of the American north and south into one town, which serves to pluralize African American culture. In Whitehead’s text, American history is removed from its chronological place, which creates a duality that instills Freud’s theory of the uncanny within both the character and the reader. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection