Chef's Salad
Abstract
Sherman Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto is not a linear novel. Instead, it is a fractured narrative, consisting of twenty-one related stories. I believe that Alexie's choice of form is the best choice for this book. A nonlinear, fractured narrative is the most effective means to convey displacement and violation. Many authors of color writing about themes of displacement and violation have made similar choices. In addition to Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto, the books that have most influenced my writing are: Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, and Junot Diaz's Drown—all are nonlinear, fractured narratives. These books were a big influence when I was writing my manuscript, Chef's Salad , which consists of seventeen interrelated stories that I separate into three sections. The stories span over thirty years and take place in locales as diverse as Kingston, Jamaica; Brooklyn, New York; Anniston, Alabama; El Paso, Texas; and San Francisco, California. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Subject Area
American literature|Creative writing
Recommended Citation
Armendariz, Rosanna, "Chef's Salad" (2005). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI1430928.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1430928