Will You Tell Me Another Story?: The Short Story Cycle as National Critique

Science Center K209

My project examines how marginalized and diaspora writers have used the short story cycle’s repetitious and episodic structure to create alternative narratives that resist existing national narratives surrounding their communities. I will be using Maxine Hong Kingston’s, The Woman Warrior as a case study to examine non-normative ways of narration. I believe that the structure of these texts is closely connected to oral history traditions from their specific communities and must be constructed in ways that deviate from traditional Western novel. It is the short story cycle’s episodic and repetitive nature that allows for these writers explore the complex themes of memory and belonging because the short story cycle focuses on a collective imagining of what meaningmaking can be. As an immigrant and Chinese American writer, I am also interested in contextualizing my own writing in the short story cycle format and understanding how my contributions to the genre also emphasize alternative narratives that resist national paradigms.