The eight short stories in Shorty examine themes including racism, oppression, conflict, social perception, miscommunication, struggles over meaning, truth and ethnic identity. New Zealand is a country reinventing itself from its colonial past (Wyn 2004 p. 277); identity-making in this country is a ‘dynamic process’ (Liu et al. 2005 p.11) which generates new cultural forms and practices. The concept of culture and subculture links the aforementioned themes in Shorty.

In a time of Global Pandemic, massive social justice demonstrations, and concerning political shifts, reality feels inaccessible and at times even unreal. With quarantine and social distance as the new norm, our human connections are abstract and digitized. My thesis will be a collection of short fiction that seeks to employ methods of the speculative genre and alternative narrative structure to explore our shifting understanding of humanity and connectedness. The introduction to this collection will lay out the process through which speculative realities better define our own.

A collection of short stories

In the Cards is a collection of five interrelated short stories with six related poems in between each piece. Each of the selections features a female protagonist with a focus on two main characters, Shelley and Caroline, half-sisters trying to regain their sisterhood after their father's death. Themes explored in the fiction and poetry include faith and relationships, and how they can be connected. Caroline and Shelley drive the primary storyline with the former, a self-described goody goody who has surrounded herself with superficial friends. Between the expectations of the community that surrounds her and the standards she has set for herself, she struggles to create a unique identity that is not influenced by some form of expectation. She is also haunted by guilt over her relationship with her younger sister Shelley, with whom she has had minimal contact ever since Caroline refused to attend their father's funeral, though she keeps these feeling largely to herself. Shelley's mother, Caroline's step-mother, has brought Shelley up in a household dominated by strict adherence to Catholicism, and conservative ideals. When the half-sisters' father dies, Shelley becomes increasingly disillusioned by religious faith, and faith in the people she thought cared for her most, such as Caroline. Both sisters must look beyond their own perspectives of what has happened in their pasts in order to mature, understand, and maybe grow to forgive each other and themselves.

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The stories in this manuscript deal with complicated relationships, misunderstandings, overstepped boundaries, and the sacrifices we make for our loved ones. I’m attracted to characters who are reaching for something just out of grasp, and I love exploring what caused that gap, the consequences from that gap, and how they might bridge that gap. My work is informed by my experience as an east Asian American, second-generation immigrant, and growing up lower-middle class. That's partially why so many of my characters are conflicted with their identity, why they’re so easily influenced by other people, and why they struggle to understand, to be understood, to love, and to be loved. While none of these stories are autobiographical, I believe good writing comes from empathy. Everyone knows what it feels like to be hurt, to be messy, to love and lose someone or something. At least one of these things are at the core of each story, and I hope by tapping into these emotions, I can make my readers feel something.

This thesis project involves the translation of a selection of short stories by Camille Deslauriers, a Québécois writer, from French into English, as well as the translation of a selection of short stories by Angie Abdou, a Western English-Canadian writer, from English into French. The thesis is divided into four chapters into which the translations have been inserted. The chapters provide an introduction and commentary to the translations. I begin by giving a brief overview of the importance of literary translation in Canada as well as a short description of Québécois and English-Canadian short fiction.This section introduces the two authors that have been chosen for this thesis, Camille Deslauriers and Angie Abdou, as well as their collections of short stories, Femme-Boa and Anything Boys Can Do respectively. I discuss various approaches to translation, literary translation, linguistic issues, the translation process, and the issue of mother tongue and directionality. Following the two introductory chapters are the translations. I have translated nine of Camille Deslauriers' short stories from Femme-Boa from French into English, and three of Angie Abdou's short stories from Anything Boys Can Do from English into French. In both cases, these are the first translations to be done of these authors' works. I then go on to describe certain challenges posed by the translations, giving examples of strategies adopted to resolve the problems. In the final chapter, I reflect upon the translation process as a whole, in light of the revisions done by both of my thesis advisors, in terms of vocabulary, syntax, bilingualism, and biculturalism.This reflection enables me to synthesize the knowledge that I acquired through the whole translation experience.