The following manuscript is a collection of linked stories that follows a family from Jamaica and Trinidad to the U.S. and back. The collection focuses on two sisters' episodic journey through their sexual awakenings, their mother's illness, their father's violence and absence. In the process, the sisters come to terms with their own hybrid identities. In writing this book, I drew not only from my personal experience, but also from extensive research both in Trinidad and Tobago and in books and oral histories. The enclosed stories include, "What's My Name?" which is told from the point of view of oral history personified--a narrator trying to break free from "dominant narrative." In this way, my work aims to challenge the nature of narrative itself. Other pieces such as, "Taino Instructions for Communicating with Dead Mothers," re-purpose historical figures into present day in order to create a mythic ghost story. / Master of Fine Arts

An Earth of Foxes: A Novel opens in 2073 and explores the realities of daily life if environmental change unfolds in particular, ever-more-likely ways—as well as the kind of collaborative action that will be required to survive. In North Dakota, a woman struggles with being an outsider and the only fertile woman in a former fracking town; in Idaho a girl weighs whether or not to run away from the militia that’s raised her; in Arkansas a young woman contemplates futility as her town erodes. Climate change is not a catastrophe or an apocalypse. It doesn’t end, there can be no clearly defined after. Heat and storms and earthquakes become an invisible routine. People defend what they have or set out from one corner of the country to another, hoping for better. A work of speculative climate fiction, An Earth of Foxes attempts to marry the extrapolation of science fiction with literary fiction’s empathy to the relationships and choices of individuals. The book considers complicity, futility, and sacrifice as climate change unravels with slow and intimate violence, a problem that cannot be solved by some single character’s hero journey but demands collective action.

This collection contains a preface entitled "Of Other Worlds" and the following short stories: "The Mind's Eye," "Waking," "The Conquest of the World," "Persephone," and "Extradition." This creative thesis includes a blend of science fiction and literary realism short stories, which are collectively concerned with questions of time, narration, and the use of language. As well, the preface discusses science fiction theory, narrative strategies such as the use of the first person perspective, and the author's theory of composition.

This thesis includes an original science-fiction novella entitled "The Hunted" and accompanying commentary which illustrates how anthropological fiction can use characterization, setting, and conflict to build effective inter-subjective models.

Theories of Relativity is a post-modern novella that questions the authority of truth. Multiple perspectives are utilized in the narrative to recount how the murder of a young girl has affected the tragedy's survivors. The focus of the narrative is not to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused, but to show how perspective influences our perception of truth. Eighteen pages of prefatory remarks comprise the body of an essay that explores the parameters of truth.

For hundreds of years, Ona and her people have been unknowingly enslaved. Ona has given everything she is to the spiritual people on the mountain, including her own son. So when rumors spread through the swamp’s magical mycelium that she and her people are slaves, Ona must find the truth and, if possible, reunite with her son before he becomes as evil as those who raised him. Meanwhile, her son has his own doubts after his people leave his friend to die. As he and Ona journey separately to save the people they love, they find everything they believed to be true falling apart, making room for a new kind of faith and life.

The ten stories in this short story collection explore the liminal spaces created by certain physical spaces as well as times in the characters’ lives. The stories are largely related to a school environment, and the relationships and experiences that are unique to the players living and moving within that context. How much are the relationships and actions of the characters influenced by the setting. What weight do institutional forces and tradition carry in the characters’ lives, and how do they exploit it for their own will or conform?

The novel FAMILY MEDICINE follows three married women as they struggle to define themselves in Foley, South Dakota, a small town where privacy is nearly impossible. Marcy Morrow, a queen bee, in a vulnerable moment reveals misgivings about her second pregnancy to Bridget Cunningham, the wife of Dr. Herb Cunningham and his office manager at the town’s only medical practice. Bridget's offer of off-the-books help begins a chain of secrecy into which Dr. Maka Smith, the practice’s other physician, is reluctantly pulled. Meanwhile Marcy and Bridget’s husbands run for mayor, forcing the women to reexamine their lives, ambitions, and the nature of friendship. The use of multiple perspectives, as in Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, helps reveal motives while heightening tension. FAMILY MEDICINE’s focus on a small community, like that Jane Austen’s Emma, uncovers the rivalries, alliances, and power of gossip in a circumscribed world.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2003. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-375). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99175

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in English. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 250-268). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99240