Cascade

Date of Award

6-15-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts

First Advisor

Patrick Cottrell

Second Advisor

Saleh Saterstrom

Third Advisor

Joanna Howard

Fourth Advisor

Tayana Hardin

Fifth Advisor

Jennifer Pap

Keywords

Creative writing, Fiction

Abstract

Set in Colorado Springs, Cascade is a novel detailing the unraveling senses of belonging of its cast of characters. At the start of the novel Isa’s adoptive father, Ottis, leaves the city where they’ve built a life as a small, makeshift family. Isa and her mother Teresa, brother Zo, and best friend Cherry are left to confront their individual and collective modes of survival in Colorado Springs. As a novel, Cascade is concerned with a less critically engaged edge of the black diaspora in America: the realities and peculiarities of being black the Mountain West, in a city that did not experience a major historical black migration but has an established black population due only to the military and scattered migrations of black individuals and families.

While Cascade is the novel-in-progress examining these layers through detailing the lived experiences of its characters, the critical afterword is a craft essay exploring Cascade’s theoretical and spiritual underpinnings, as well as tracing its future potential. This afterword explores the influence of Black Geographies further, along with the novel’s engagement with reality TV, epiphenomenal time, craft questions of fiction and the true story, and the idea of ancestor as muse. As a whole, this project seeks to explore some of these seams between geography, blackness, the construction of family, and how we can use narrative to navigate the space between the living and the dead.

Copyright Date

6-2024

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. Permanently suppressed.

Rights Holder

Elisabeth L. Booze

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

174 pgs

File Size

663 KB

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