Stay Brave My Hercules

<p>“Stay Brave My Hercules” is a collection of nine original short stories separated into two sections: “Stay Brave My Hercules” and “Matsuri”.</p> <p>In the first section, “Stay Brave My Hercules”, I explore the themes of hypermasculinity, loneliness, and insecurity, in particular the points in which they intersect. These stories are narrated by different male characters between the ages of seventeen and twenty-seven and who all struggle in different ways to conform to masculine norms.</p> <p>In the second section, “Matsuri”, I explore the themes of family, loss, and devastation through the eyes of the Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II. In these stories, magical realism plays a heavy role in defining familial relationships and providing a means for which love and loyalty can be expressed.</p> <p>Mostly, I wanted to create compelling characters: characters who we can identify with, characters who long and love and hurt in the same ways we do, characters who stay with us after we’ve forgotten the story, characters who become so real that we wake up in the morning and wonder if they had slept well. This is what I attempt to achieve in creating this manuscript. This is why I write.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year dc:date.available

2016

Author dc:creator

• Wang, Ernie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Maile Chapman
• Douglas Unger
• Julia Lee
• Brandon Manning

• Creative Writing

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/2915

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:thesesdissertations-3918