The characters in the short story collection The Language of Dolls spring up from the poor, the resource less multitudes of society. Caught in their culture, locale, and state in life, these characters struggle to manifest their potential to the fullest. In a way, they stretch their boundaries and distinguish themselves. Teetering on the verge of a collapse, whether men or women, poor or psychologically impoverished, they all emerge triumphant or often signal ambiguous resolutions. Most of the stories present the struggle of women in adverse circumstances. The Language of Dolls is an act of translation. Set in India and the United States, these stories, characters, their speech, actions, rituals, traditions, setting all are an alien culture fused indelibly to the English language. / Master of Fine Arts

Set against a lush landscape of swaying palms and rolling waves in what should be a tropical paradise is Miami a.k.a. The Magic City—a hedonistic metropolis saturated with sex whose residents are consumed with the pleasure principle. Combine the sheer numbers and too-busy, modern lives—and the consequential ability to live anonymously—plus inhabitants who embrace the “me"? principle, whip these ingredients together, and traditional guidelines are abandoned. The linked fictional collection consists of longer, more richly-textured stories, as well as experimental and flash fiction pieces that mirror the characters’ unreflective lives and risk-taking nature. While aware of conservative literary models, writing stories about my home of thirty years demanded the more avant-garde tradition of the erotic exemplified by Vladimir Nabokov, Anaїs Nin, and Sidonie Gabrielle Colette. And because my stories are grounded in such a vehemently bold locale—not to mention a bolder present—I aimed for language as bold. To alert the reader that this is a different sort of read, a Sexual Relationship Tree—as opposed to the more customary Family Tree—has been placed at the collection’s start. Clearly, mischief abounds. Note it was my conscious decision not to insert a filter between the story and the reader. Keeping my narrator’s tongue tightly in check, I have embodied the commonly heard storytelling directive of “show, don’t tell"? by opting for a more reportorial approach. I trust my sagacious reader to supply a filter of his/her own when considering the thematic weights of the collection. / Master of Fine Arts

Where Light Is and The Definition of Snow are linked manuscripts in which a world is held in lyrical suspension. In the process of speaking alongside one another, the stories and poems in these collections explore the repercussions of grief, loss, and loneliness and how these are affected by relationships and gender dynamics. “A Feeling" gives voice to the female narrator’s sense of disembodiment in “Series of Doors." “Fishtails" and “At Watch" probe into the kind of complex familial relationships brought about through addiction and loss, just like the young girls’ relationships with their parents in “All Around Us" and “Vesuvian Summer." Throughout these collections, the genres are connected by form. Modes overlap, allowing lyric stories to speak alongside narrative poems. There is an attempt to fuse interior and exterior landscapes, a desire to rework memory, to hold on to something already acknowledged as being lost. These stories and poems meet in a space of simultaneous loneliness and illumination: where bad things are about to happen, but beauty is still insistent. / Master of Fine Arts

These stories examine the lives of working class people in light of the current economic and social climate. They address and attempt to empathize with the despair and disillusionment many working class Americans express in response to their economic and social realities, and the stories attempt to walk a non-judgmental line regarding the attitudes these characters espouse. Instead of judging the characters or championing a particular moral stance, the pieces attempt to present individuals faced with major failures: child abandonment, guilt over preventable death, overriding selfishness, racism, and shame regarding social status. These failures of character or morality echo the larger failings, as the characters perceive them, of their time and place. Within this worldview of disillusionment and despair, many of the characters in these stories choose to struggle toward self-betterment—not economic or social betterment per se, but individual betterment, a reckoning with themselves and their failures that necessarily reflects and interacts with the world they inhabit. These are stories rooted in the Midwest and its rust-belt inhabitants, but for all their contemporary socio-economic concerns, the stories are first and foremost concerned with the individual and representing each individual portrayed accurately and honestly. / Master of Fine Arts

The stories in this collection reflect the absurdities of contemporary American family life, and the particularly distressing economic conditions of the present moment. These stories often employ absurdist elements. Because of the personal history that informs my work, realism does not seem an appropriate form for me. My oldest son, in whom my emotional well-being is heavily invested, is autistic. He is not “normal"? in a way that others would understand as “normal."? Parenting a child with special needs changes the way a marriage operates, deforming it. The personal experience that drives these stories often seems fantastical even to me. I don’t write about my personal experiences, but I write about the impressions that those experiences make upon me. In this way, my work is descriptive rather than didactic. / Master of Fine Arts

The Uglier Animals is a collection of short stories exploring themes of change, impermanence and bodily transformation through a speculative lens. The characters in these stories struggle with the friction between place and desire. The body becomes a place on its own, to be trapped in or freed by. Humans and animals alike navigate the challenges of being, existing in relation to others and the space between us. Their bodies are burdens and tools, prisons and possibilities, and they morph accordingly, flesh inscribed with trauma and yearning. A bear fears going into hibernation. Unable to get an abortion, a young girl begins to absorb anyone who touches her pregnant belly. After a friend survives being beheaded by the farmer they worship, a rooster reckons with the tangled web between faith, love, and violence. In modern Brazil, a chicken coop, or under the sea, characters grapple with abandonment and longing. Bodies shrink and grow, cling to life and return from death, are opened up and torn apart. The stories swim in the gaps between emotional connections, characters wrestling with our reasons to leave, our reasons to stay, and everything we must carry along the way.

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"Bingo" and Other Stories is a collection of short stories whose individual primary characters are forced to make profound changes in the wake of a discovery that comes about as a result of a tragedy or strained personal relationship or a combination of both. This collection is multigenerational in its collective scope and it reflects influences that come from the African-American and Southern literary traditions. In addition, it uses realism to create the settings for and sensibilities of the characters who populate the stories. Stories in the collection are also connected in how they conjure up various geographical locations in Florida, especially regions of Florida that identify with the traditional American South. / by Richard Peacock. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

This dissertation makes an investigation of two short story collections by the pioneering IsiZulu writers in this genre, W M B Mkhize and M J Mngadi with particular reference to exposition, characterisation, style and themes. The theoretical framework that has been used has been mainly the structuralist approach though others such as historical biographical and moral philosophical, Marxist or formalism and new criticism have also been used. This study consists of six chapters; the first chapter serves as the general introduction to the whole dissertation. The authors' biographical sketches have been given. The discussion of the methodology, definition of the important concepts, parallel works in isiZulu short stories, the chapter outline, theoretical framework and the conclusion make up the rest of the chapter. Chapter 2 focuses on exposition. Different kinds of expositions as used by authors have been dealt with and the effects they have on the readers. The different expositions have been discussed as the authors use them. These include the variety of dialogues and monologues. The others are character, event and nature type of expositions. Chapter 3 deals with characterisation. Naming, plausibility of characters, different kinds of characters and the educative value they have on the readers has been studied. Major and minor characters have been discussed in this chapter. Chapter 4 concerns itself with style. This includes diction, phrases and sentences, the use of proverbs and figures of speech have been analysed. Precise word selection and symbolism have been investigated in the authors' works. Chapter 5 in this research has to do with themes. The study of themes as covered by authors has been covered. The research has confined itself to general, specific and presentation of themes as the serious concern of writers in sending messages to the readers. Chapter 6 deals with general conclusion. It has finalised the evaluation and given the final overview and conclusion. Lastly it has given suggestions for some further research on the study of Mkhize and Mngadi's short stories. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.