Semester Project Update

My semester project will be one of the eight short stories that will eventually become my project for an independent writing study next fall. The stories shall all be first-person narratives, which will be delivered as fiction, that are based on real-life events. The stories will move to articulate the importance of rhetoric in society, how powerful misplaced and unchecked rhetoric can become not only for an individual but also a group, and the significant dangers of ‘altruism’ or enlightened self-interest in the wrong contexts. Given the nature of the stories, they will collectively serve as a brutally realistic social commentary ranging from the mid-nineties to the present-day. There will be no definitive protagonist or antagonist in any of the stories; however, the acknowledged rhetorician, whose ‘sapience’ will resonate through the main character’s sentiments and actions, at play in each story can be thought off as the perpetuator of events, not as an antagonist. I do hope to replicate the styles of Claudia Rankine, Hilton Als, and even Ayad Akhtar. Their means of conveyance, in both connotation and content, is dense and heady just as it is direct, conversational, and hyper-realistic. I wish to challenge the and unearth the prejudices so carefully buried in the reader’s subconscious thinking. By forcing readers to take a moral stance in each story, by placing various ethical representatives in conflict with one another, readers will ultimately find out how influenced their own ideology and thinking is by the political, social, racial, or sexualized rhetoric working in American minds.

The story will surround Sammie, a young aspiring artist caught between a distinctly patriarchal community, a stringent family model, and the prospects of unrestricted expression in visual art. Sammie, a 20-year-old north Jersey native, has found her home town of Sandyston, NJ, a parochial, traditionalist community just minutes from the Pennsylvanian border, an archetype for all things patriarchal au courant. In her short years as an artist, Sammie has found solace in openly expressing notions of feminism that have often been silenced by her community at large. Despite ridicule or comments of vulgarity, inappropriateness, etc. Sammie finds that her art effectively transcends the boundaries put in place by an unjust, systematically dominative practice enforced by both her boyfriend, father, and perpetuated by her submissive mother. Dealing with inner turmoil, social pressures, and subjugation, she struggles to find a meaningful outlet other than her already ridiculed art. How will she cope?