Pathi’s sister is still troubling
- Authors: Naidoo, Savani
- Date: 2023-03-30
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century , Diaries -- Authorship , Books Reviews
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/408942 , vital:70539
- Description: My thesis is a collection of micro fiction, flash fiction, fairy tales, vignettes and short stories which explore the tension of being both an insider and an outsider. I have access to different cultures without belonging to any of them: as a child, my family moved from a South African Indian community to a formerly whites-only suburb; as an adult I have lived in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. My prose draws on my life experiences, family legends, neighbourhood gossip, news reports and historical events to question norms and ideas that I may have taken for granted had I been fully inside a single culture. In my thesis I frequently spell words phonetically to mimic how I hear or remember them. I also borrow words from languages I don’t speak. I want the languages I use and mix to corrupt each other, as Raymond Federman put it, in order to better express the voices and contexts of the communities I draw inspiration from. Kuzhali Manickavel’s Things We Found During the Autopsy showed me that culturally rich imagery can be used without interrupting narrative flow with explanations. I am also influenced by the poetic sense of rhythm and melody of Lydia Davis’s minimalist prose, and by Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, where each concise short story stands alone but together creates a broad understanding of people and place. Anthologies such as PP/FF, edited by Peter Conners, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, edited by Kate Bernheimer, have inspired me to be bold in finding the form that best allows each narrative to be told. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2023
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The Daily Sun subscribers
- Authors: Mahe, Xolani
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , Diaries -- Authorship , Books Reviews , South African fiction (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/406276 , vital:70254
- Description: My thesis comprises interlinked short stories, verfabula, sketches, fragments, flash fiction, folktales, anecdotes, and the epistolary form. I write in English tinged with IsiXhosa. In terms of specific influences, the collection is strongly influenced by the experimental writing of Kathy Acker and Samuel Delany notably the uncompromising ways in which they contort formal grammar and sexuality, the defamiliarizing function of the phantasmagoria in the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch, the techniques of the picturesque as used by Amos Tutuola, and, importantly, narration in the present tense as deployed in Dambudzo Marechera’s House of Hunger which results in negation and subversion of the narrative depiction of the past, the present, and the future. On the stylistic level, I am strongly influenced by the haunting surrealism of Sony Labou Tansi, the eccentric meditations of Julio Cortázar, and the iconoclastic rants of Lesego Rampolokeng. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2022
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Jungle Drive and Other Stories
- Authors: Koenig, Nathalie
- Date: 2021-10-29
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) South Africa , South African fiction (English) 21st century , South African poetry (English) 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/192225 , vital:45207
- Description: My thesis comprises prose in a variety of forms with porous borders, including the short story, flash fiction and prose poetry. I am attracted to a processual approach to writing as I like the potential for experimentation with spontaneity and textual improvisation within and across forms that this allows. I am influenced by Joanna Ruocco’s novellas, The Mothering Coven and Dan, whose worlds are built with generously scattered references, interesting words and strange features, delivered in a dead-pan tone that joyfully scrambles my logic. At the same time, I am inspired by the precision and beauty of Tina May Hall’s prose, and how she plays in the space between the natural and magical worlds. In addition, I draw on the musicality and rhythm of Noy Holland and JA Tyler’s prose, adding a corporeal layer to the words, sounds and movement of the text. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2021
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