No Gods, Only Suffering

This short story collection follows one dysfunctional family’s dissolution across central and eastern Kansas. Set against the simultaneously blooming and sickened landscape of rural and college-town Kansas, the Wells family navigates familial love, trauma, and mutating identities. This work is in part a conversation with classic Midwestern characters. Jordan Wells, the protagonist of a majority of these stories, is anything but the typical rural-girl archetype. Whereas the familiar mold of a Good Kansas girl in fiction may be white, heterosexual, and Christian, among other traits, Jordan is biracial, bisexual, and atheist. Unlike the warm-hearted, forgiving model of the Good Kansas Girl, Jordan is hateful, willing to hold grudges and yet, deeply troubled by her own “goodness.” In “Wilson Lake,” Jordan roots for the end to her parents’ tumultuous marriage, but forgets the violent cost of this separation. Orphaned in her mid-twenties, Jordan reflects on her relationship with her parents, meanness, and grief in the story “Venice Beach.” In both “Asynchronous” and “South Padre Island, 2019,” Jordan grapples with newfound bigotry among friends in the Trump era, as well as a complicit partner and a traumatized one. Her introspection about morality progresses through these stories as she hurts others and is hurt in turn. As a teenager in the story “Homesteader,” Jordan struggles to find her footing among her peers, and ultimately names her chosen home as the land, for which she holds a deeply spiritual connection. As much as this collection is an exploration of her identity from childhood into young adulthood, it is also a project in mythologizing environment. Both a representation of and departure from long-standing ideologies about the land in rural Kansas, this collection juxtaposes sardonic references to Christianity with earnest proclamations about the land’s power. No Gods, Only Suffering is a collection about Kansas through and through. The Kansas of this collection is not one of homogeneity or bald dismissals, but of multi-faceted identities, struggles, and ever-changing conceptions of what it is to be human, because if Kansans are good at anything, it is coming out of a hardship tougher than dirt.

Name thesis:degree_name

Masters (Master of Fine Arts)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Creative Writing and Media Arts (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Seim, Chloe

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hodgen, Christie, 1974-

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/73994

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/73994