Papatya Bucak, Ayse

Between Us and All is a collection of fictional stories addressing themes of gender, religion, family, class, and sexuality. A portion of this manuscript is a linked collection of short stories, following the fictional Kelly/Sullivan family through their daily lives in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania.

In Into Memory, memory is no longer something which resides in the past. Instead, it is a substance which can be extracted and consumed like a hallucinogenic drug, immersing consumers in a vivid and immediate past whose physical effects linger long after the images of that memory disappear. For Paul Mendez, these memories offer an escape from a present defined by grief, while former professional football prospect Calvin Long seeks to reconnect with a past too long stained by regret. For law school student Kara Douglas, selling erotic memories is simply a business transaction—that is until she considers removing the parts of her past that stand in the way of the future she desires. Set in the rolling hills of contemporary Tallahassee, Into Memory explores the relationships that we maintain, for better or worse, with our pasts and what we will do to avoid, restore, or change them.

This is a collection of fiction that draws on the author’s own experiences as a western foreigner in America, while also taking inspiration from many different art forms and their depictions of American life, as experienced by outsiders. The themes of this collection center around the discord and disparity prevalent between British and American life. The other key theme in this collection is how violence seems to be simmering, always near at hand, in a country like America. In this way, many of the stories allude to a kind of violence taken to be something unique to American society, which often goes unrealized or unacted upon, or sometimes unravels accordingly. The thesis project itself considers how these stories could only take place in America today, and how the aforementioned cultural discord, or disharmony, connects the narratives with a shared feeling of cultural commentary about the country as a whole.