Date of Award

12-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Advisor

Allison Lynn

Second Advisor

Maurice Broaddus

Abstract

This thesis is a collection of short stories that blends realism, speculative fiction, and South Asian folklore to examine how identity is negotiated through belief, culture, and survival across borders. The stories center characters who must continually interpret the worlds they inhabit in order to sustain self identity. Names in this collection function as sites of power and vulnerability: they are inherited, altered and concealed, shaping how characters are seen and how they see themselves. Alongside names, the supernatural and myth emerges not only as metaphors, but as lived forces, drawing from Islamic folklore and mythic traditions to articulate experiences of displacement, war, illness, and loss that realism alone cannot contain. The work is particularly informed by the afterlives of colonialism, militarization, and partition. The collection moves between intimate domestic scenes and moments of rupture, reflecting the instability of the worlds that the characters traverse. Across the collection, themes of grief, resistance, and ethical reckoning become the language of the pages.

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