M.A. - English
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Item A Love Enveloped(2024) Llop, Joel C.; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; EnglishItem The Words We Do Not Hear(2024) Yamauchi, Ryan; Shankar, Subramanian; EnglishItem The Waiting Room(2024) Santana, Kristin Olsen; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; EnglishItem 한: Han(2021) Lee, Christina Nakyong; Fantauzzo, Laurel F.; EnglishItem The Last Bus to Waipahū(2023) Saifoloi, Ryan Balandran; Revilla, Noʻu; EnglishItem Retrograde: A Novel(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2023) Lynch, Fiona; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; EnglishThe 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.Item Miss L: A Thesis(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) Bailey, Kristen; Kahakauwila, Kristiana; EnglishBen, 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?Item Ke Uliuli(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) U'u, Briana Koani; Shankar, Subramanian; EnglishKe 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.Item Rivers Between Us(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Hah, Bora; Pak, Gary; EnglishRivers 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.Item The New Refuge(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Whoriskey, Michael; Shankar, Subramanian; EnglishThe 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.