M.A. - English

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/2052

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 81

Journey back from the abyss
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Cruz-Guzmán, Angie; Revilla, No'ukahau'oli; English
Inspired by the hammock in my grandmother's home, JOURNEY BACK FROM THE ABYSS is a lyric essay made of three intertwined sections: threads, gaps, and heavens. The foundation of the hammock, THREADS, is dedicated to the construction of my family before/after migration. Spaces left open, or GAPS, examines the oppression in the United States where Latine/o and migrant communities are constantly surveillanced. HEAVENS situates itself through motion; fasteningmoments that bring my identity to a closeness with my heritage, the country we left, and possible futures. Bringing together essays, poetry, and photographs, JOURNEY BACK FROM THE ABYSS weaves the story of migration, revelation, and reconciliation in the context of Central-American identity in the 21st-century. A critical introduction precedes the creative work and contextualizes the project in the fields of creative nonfiction and Latine/o studies.
Babaylan's betrayal
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Contratto, Gabriella Sophia; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
Babaylan’s Betrayal is the first part of a planned novel. It is a YA urban-fantasy narrative set in Los Angeles that draws from Filipino myth and folklore but also reflects the diversity of the contemporary California city. Hilaya is a high school Filipino student. When her mom disappears in a mysterious crime, Hilaya finds out that her mom was a babaylan (shaman) who fled the Philippines to protect her daughter. Hilaya's mother tricked an anito, Ulan, into her service and brought him to America when they immigrated, although he ran away from the family and has been living on his own for years. Together Hilaya and Ulan attempt to find out what happened to their beloved family member.
Absolution
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Haeems, Alysha; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
This is a slipstream psychological horror novella about maternal love, maternal guilt, and maternal failure, simultaneously exploring the supernatural as a sort of psychosis. Following a tragic accident in which a mother chooses herself over her child, the mother is haunted by an unending guilt embodied by a demonic entity. As the lines between reality, dream, and hallucination blur, her life unravels.
Across three shores
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Muramoto, Tiffani; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
Three generations, three homes, and one body of water that binds despite the diaspora. This thesis -- a novel of vignettes-- explores the complexities within the microcosm of a multi-generational household, exploring the themes of generational trauma, cultural/gender expectations, and the pursuit and realization of self-worth. Through imagery and symbolism, mundane routines such as cooking, reminiscing in the garden, and even tea and coffee preferences reveal where the past and present bled together, painting a picture of inherited burdens and budding personal aspirations. The narrator's internal clash of individual and familial expectations is central to the piece. The yearning for independence is highlighted by her belief: "One day, I will get out of here." This idea has been echoed generation after generation as the family moves further and further away from their ancestral homelands. Through playful prose, layered symbolism, and characterizations, this piece takes a contemplative examination and approach to personal and familial histories intersecting and shaping the pursuit of identity and meaning.
A Love Enveloped
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Llop, Joel C.; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
A Love Enveloped is a historical fiction novella about a son’s recount and search for an answer to his inquietude. Knowing little about his father, who died in World War I, he pieces together scattered memories from his youth with his mother—a recluse absorbed in her painting. It is only when a young woman disrupts their quiet lives with information about his father that the son is compelled to cross the Atlantic in search of answers. The story explores the arbitrariness of existence and the human compulsion to find meaning, regardless of the evidence. The novella reveals how individuals construct narratives as a matrix to reconstruct their past and, in doing so, gain a sense of unity and purpose. A type of love is presented through the narrator’s compulsion to retell the stories he is told and the stories he tells himself.
The Words We Do Not Hear
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Yamauchi, Ryan; Shankar, Subramanian; English
Science fiction has long been a fascination for both academic and casual readers. It blends reality and possibility together, allowing both the author and readers to explore those futures that may come to pass. This collection of short stories attempts to add to this genre and inspire those who read it to think deeply about the influence technology has on those who exist at the fringes of society’s recognition. By combining Japanese form and aesthetics with Western scientific concerns, these works aim to address themes of isolation, loss, and silencing. By doing so, the stories here strive to add something new to the vast canon that makes up the science fiction genre.
The Waiting Room
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Santana, Kristin Olsen; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
The Waiting Room is a hybrid memoir that explores chronic illness, disability, and major surgery as well as the relentless and unsubstantial pursuit of cure. Through this project, I navigate the complexities of love and reshape an understanding of healing and overcoming. The narrative attempts to reclaim the space of the waiting room, a place often laden with trauma, disappointment, neglect, and the pain of not being seen. Instead, The Waiting Room grapples with notions of cure and identity by making the waiting room the site of meaning and narrative. A critical introduction precedes the creative work and contextualizes the memoir in the fields of disability and trauma studies, and memoir. The creative work in thisdissertation is suppressed in the UH institutional repository, ScholarSpace, https:// scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/. Inquiries about the creative work should be made to Kristin Olsen Santana.
한: Han
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2021) Lee, Christina Nakyong; Fantauzzo, Laurel F.; English
Han is an epistolary memoir that explores schizophrenia not solely as a medical diagnosis but as a way to understand cross-cultural relationships, intergenerational trauma, and challenge the narrative of the history of the Korean War by looking at it through the lens of mental illness. Told in the second-person “you,” the narrator writes to her grandmother, or Halmoni, who has dementia and is slowly losing her memories. She retells her grandmother’s stories through the epistolary to give them back to her. Nakyong, a Korean American who has schizophrenia attempts to understand herself and her diagnosis through her grandmother’s stories about her own experiences developing schizophrenia at age eight, in the midst of the Korean War. This memoir also attempts to give insight into Korean history and the narrator’s family history from 1942 to the present through the experience of mental illness. Han, an epistolary memoir with lyric and graphic memoir elements, is a genealogical cartography that traces the lineage of sexual trauma and mental illness in one family; specifically, between a grandmother and a granddaughter.
The Last Bus to Waipahū
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2023) Saifoloi, Ryan Balandran; Revilla, Noʻu; English
The Last Bus to Waipahū is a poetry collection that delves into the harsh beauty of local lived experiences in a modern-day Hawaiʻi. It revolves around the working-class, the queer, the Pasifika, and the local communities that understand the racism, violence, poverty, and various struggles endeavored in an occupied state. This collection of poetry stems from and extends traditions of Pasifika poetry (Sia Figiel & Wayne Kaumualiʻi Westlake) and theory (Albert Wendt & Epeli Hauʻofa) that link these collective struggles to long histories of colonization in Moananuiākea.
Retrograde: A Novel
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Lynch, Fiona; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
The creative work in this thesis is suppressed in the UH institutional repository, Kahualike, kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu. Inquiries about the creative work should be made to Fiona Lynch. Retrograde is a Young/New Adult novel about a college freshman who gets a job writing horoscopes and quickly realizes she can use them to affect her readers' lives, specifically targeting the aspiring Instagram influencer who bullied her autistic best friend, as well as that best friend's search for autonomy and self-acceptance after years of receiving the message that her disability was something wrong with her. The story explores disability acceptance, toxic female friendships, and the helpful and harmful uses of social media. Ultimately, the novel is about the attempt to control what either cannot or should not be controlled, particularly other people, and the way that this control creates unhealthy intrapersonal, social, and societal relationships. While telling an entertaining story, the book portrays the intertwining lives of a young woman unexpectedly questioning the narrative she's been told about her autistic identity, and her friend becoming increasingly obsessed with the newfound power social media offers her. Bringing together various themes and issues, Retrograde creates a dynamic understanding of the different ways people are marginalized, while offering and promoting a way to personally reject them and seek self-acceptance.
Miss L: A Thesis
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Bailey, Kristen; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; English
Ben, a 23-year-old aspiring screenwriter, gets his big break when the 38-year-old actress, Miss L, discovers his script and asks to be the lead. Although noted as one of the most famous and talented actresses in the business, Miss L is known to keep to herself in her home of Mori Manor, the mansion her father, the world-renowned movie producer, Jack Martinez, left her after taking his life. As Ben and Miss L start their journey on Ben’s film, Ben’s feelings for Miss L blossom as he uncovers more about the mysterious actress through secret letters, discovering the truth behind her past filled with death, love, loss, and passion. This creative thesis begins with a critical introduction along with chapters one through six of the romance novel-in-progress, Miss L. The critical introduction discusses Miss L through touchstone novels in the genre and literary theory ultimately asking the question, do all romances require a happily ever after?
Ke Uliuli
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) U'u, Briana Koani; Shankar, Subramanian; English
Ke Uliuli is a speculative novella that takes place in post-apocalyptic Hawaii. It follows the final interaction between a kanaka maoli woman and her deceased ex-wife who has been brought back to life through the means of a device called a CCT-unit that utilizes data collected over the course of one's entire life.
Rivers Between Us
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Hah, Bora; Pak, Gary; English
Rivers Between Us is a short story collection that mediates the consequences of the Korean War lingering in the everyday lives of Koreans. The six stories paint raw human portraits of Koreans haunted by ghosts of the Korean War: a North Korean missionary who left his country and failed to return for the widespread famine floating the world as a ghost; a radio announcer from the North who pretends to be a South Korean receiving mysterious letters; a North Korean singer who is asked to sabotage her previous life at the cost of her stardom in the South; a South Korean military man who goes on a DMZ patrol only to run into ghosts whose lives were sacrificed during the war; a professional translator educated in America encountering a ghost of his dead father who had sent his child abroad out of fear of the war; an elderly woman diagnosed with dementia opening up her traumatic past as a war orphan to her granddaughter as the illness progresses. Weaving the forgotten and unforgotten Korean history into magical realism, Rivers Between Us reveals emotional truth behind the gleams and dreads of contemporary Korea.
The New Refuge
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Whoriskey, Michael; Shankar, Subramanian; English
The Last Refuge explores the life of a refugee, Cooper Garcia, left adrift after the death of his father amid the breakup of the United States. Forced to flee the newly-formed Republic of Texas, he makes his way to the Commonwealth of California in search of safety, finding the family he never knew. This novella examines modern American society, culture, and technology through a near-future lens by extrapolating current trends to consider their implications. Cooper wrestles with each of these forces as an outsider in a society he once belonged to in an attempt to gain some measure of control over his life.
Between Worlds
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Whang, Krista Anne; Shankar, Subramanian; English
I have always loved the way reading can transport you, especially during the most difficult periods in life. When I was a little girl, I used to rely on stories to get me through the darkest times and admired the way a good book could make getting through even the most insurmountable issues appear possible. I dreamed of being a writer and crafting the kind of stories that changed my life. Reading is still my favorite escape, and I still love getting lost in a book. Authors like Neil Gaiman, Kurt Vonnegut, C.S. Lewis, George R.R. Martin, Madeleine L’Engle, and many others, have inspired me to write my own stories. I am especially interested in adapting fairy tales and myths into unique stories that appeal to both the modern generation as well as those who love classics. For my Thesis, I chose to write a novella that adapts both Russian fairy tale elements and Greek mythology. The reason I am drawn to this type of fiction is because as a culture, we have grown up on stories of princes and princesses, dragons and dragon slayers, and happy endings. These tales are not only important, but vital, as they both inspire and caution us, letting us know that while anything may be possible, maintaining morality is also important. Thus, stories have the power to shape and change lives.
Holler
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Winland, Brittany Lynn; Shankar, Subramanian; English
This is a work of fiction that uses the short story collection format to present a range of stories and perspectives set in West Virginia. Inspired by Thomas King’s words—“the truth about stories is that that’s all we are”—these stories work to complicate and diversify the available narratives surrounding Appalachia and the people who live there. Drawing from ideas in mythology, posthumanism, ecocriticism, and embodied rhetorics, the collection looks to West Virginia’s past while asking questions about its future, particularly in terms of land and environment.
Annexed
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Harrison, Paulina A.; Ryan, Shawna Yang; English
Annexed is a 70,000 word story of lgbt love in a future United States where the government has reinstated slavery to deal with homelessness. It translates history into science fiction and romance with a focus oppressive structures and how they continue to affect times that come after their death. This book is written for all and will hopefully reach many readers in a significant way.
Isaac and the Sun King
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Casey, Alexander Nicholas; Ryan, Shawna Yang; English
This first-person YA novel, complete at 79,500 words, explores intergenerational trauma, queer identity, and various forms of privilege through the use of reinterpreted Greek myths. Titled Isaac and the Sun King, this novel is the modern retelling of Icarus and Apollo, the boy who flew too close to the sun, and the god whose chariot placed it in the sky each day. As the son of an eccentric inventor, sixteen-year-old old Isaac Hagar (Icarus) is used to watching the impossible come to life, but that doesn’t explain why he’s plagued with dreams of falling from a mysterious tower prison. When his father takes a job with an airline company belonging to Zach Skylar (Zeus), Isaac meets the man’s son, Apollo, a “super-cool” jock with an affinity for archery, medicine, and his “oracle” magic 8-ball. In this tale of reincarnation, where the wrath of the gods takes the shape of small town politics, these two boys must work together to uncover the secrets behind every seemingly-friendly face: who is the mysterious woman haunting Isaac’s dreams, and why is she always present before a death; and why, when Isaac looks into the eyes of his neighbors, does he see them living a thousand lives before?
Without Kuʻu
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Portillo, Leilani; Santos Perez, Craig; English
Without Kuʻu is a collection of poems that speaks on multiracial Hawaiian identity from the diaspora. This collection acts as a ceremonial eight strand braid that goes through the different stages of one wahine's experience with diaspora and returning to Hawaiʻi and (re)connecting to Hawaiian culture and history.
The Great Country of Asia
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Pagan, Nicole; Pak, Gary; English
The Great Country of Asia is a collection of five short stories — “Café-22,” “The Avocado Tree,” “In Fashion,” “The Neighbor,” and “Where We Are,” each with an Asian American protagonist at its center. The stories are cultural critiques that tackle themes exclusive to critical theory like typecasting, the relationship between visibility and silence, Orientalism, and more. Within this project you will find stories that address the elements and major works that had paved the foundation for the creative work that I wanted to write, as well as acknowledge the necessity for representation of Asian American stories in Western media. These stories are created with the intent to share a dialogue, contributing to a bigger conversation, and not be the singular definition of it.

Browse

Recent Submissions