Salvaging Hope: A Novel
Date
2023-10-04
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0009-0006-0486-8511
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
Salvaging Hope is a dystopian adventure novel set in 2024 in which corporations are managing a privatized version of Calgary, Alberta, akin to the other major Canadian cities. In this world, corporate control of major Canadian cities, privatization of services, for-profit health care, and exploitation of fines for high profits reign supreme. The first-person narrator is a neurodivergent & disabled queer woman in her late twenties exploring the intimate connections of identity and the power of an inclusive community against the city’s expanding social barriers and attitudes. Disabled characters in science fiction historically have not been portrayed as hero-capable in storytelling without stigmatization, stereotyping their existences, or curing them of their otherness. In Salvaging Hope, fluid expressions of non-linear time are showcased through the narrator’s perceptions about herself and the expectations of others in the world. Disability is not a monolith, and this manuscript aims to showcase a sampling of diverse human beings experiencing a world. Salvaging Hope’s dystopian society, based on the realities of our own, operates unapologetically in its exclusion of disabled and neurodivergent lives with its barriers to our survival.
Description
Keywords
Disability Fiction, Canadian Dystopian Fiction
Citation
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Department
English
Program
Writing