Over the last three years I have studied the craft of fiction with a writer’s eye toward how stories are told. At the start of this program I considered my own writing to be at times autobiographical fiction, at times magical realism, though I’m sure I would have struggled to provide a formal definition of either. Only when I began to analyze literature at the graduate level was I exposed to the complexities of defining terms I had previously taken for granted, such as “realist novel.”

When I engage with texts analytically, I do so primarily through feminist, antiracist and postcolonial lenses. As a Black woman writer, I am particularly interested in the ways in which storytelling can be at once shaped by, and used to subvert, various forms of oppression.

This thesis is an exploration of stories, their form and content. Content-wise, I deconstruct the labels “myth” and “realism.” I also examine how form mirrors and emphasizes content. To this end, the form of the thesis itself is one of process work, which is meant to provide additional reader insight into my own journey as a reader and writer. The three sections of my thesis consist of: (1) a formal paper, centered on Black women, about trauma-informed mythology (2) a readable version of a presentation on Marshall Brown’s Hegelian take on Realism; and (3) a reading diary of James Joyce’s Ulysses. All three parts consist of literary analysis and are therefore nonfiction.

My own understanding of what exactly separates myth from realism continues to evolve, primarily through my own creative explorations.