Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

Program/Concentration

Creative Writing

Committee Director

Kent Wascom

Committee Member

John McManus

Committee Member

Jane Alberdeston

Abstract

All the Dry Bones, a speculative historical novel, interrogates themes of identity, trauma, silence, and resilience through the intertwined narratives of two protagonists. Set in the Asante Kingdom of modern-day Ghana and a dystopian reimagining of America, the novel explores the enduring impact of colonial violence, enslavement, and supernatural agency on subjugated bodies. A nameless spirit child is trapped in the afterlife, forced to confront memories of his brutal death and a past shaped by servitude and rigid class hierarchies. Through his relationship with Kwame, a fellow enslaved boy, the novel examines the tension between intimacy and societal repression, positioning love as both a form of resistance and a site of erasure. As the Asante Kingdom falls to invasion, the narrative shifts to a dystopian America, where enslaved individuals with mystical abilities are exploited by Southern soldiers in their bid for dominance. Darko, once a privileged master and now enslaved himself, grapples with the cyclical nature of loss and displacement. The plantation becomes a site of both oppression and subversion, as the captors seek to weaponize the supernatural talents of the enslaved, mirroring historical patterns of extraction and commodification of Black bodies. By bridging the past and an imagined dystopian future, the work highlights the enduring echoes of colonial violence and the ways in which memory, myth, and resistance shape diasporic identity. Ultimately, All the Dry Bones challenges linear narratives of history, proposing that survival and self-reclamation emerge through an ongoing negotiation with the spectral presence of the past.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

DOI

10.25777/tvs9-jj12

ISBN

9798280747593

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Available for download on Monday, June 11, 2035

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