Date of Graduation
Spring 2024
Degree
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
Committee Chair
Michael Czyzniejewski
Abstract
“The Magic in My Writing” follows the writing, inspiration, and brainstorming for an excerpt of the novel Genie Duty. Genie Duty follows the protagonist, who is later renamed Jane, with her newfound genie companion, Gene. She is put on trial after using her final wish to wish for more genies, against the rules. Her sentence to serve as a genie “temporarily.” Together they strive to fight their genie punishment and get to the root of the origins of genie-kind. Scholarly influences of the work include Lubomír Doležel, Franz Kafka, John Gardner and Wolf Schmid, who describe the unique first-person narration choices, define the links between the human and genie worlds, and support a retelling of the genie mythos by concept of modern myth. Mythological words are split by different entities. The transfer of humans and genies to each world is unbalanced. The literary inspirations from Toni Morrison and Sapphire shape this first-person novel: A Mercy, by Morrison, with its multiple narrators, and Push, by Sapphire, with its stream-of-consciousness writing style. The strife of geniehood and its status as a punishment is crafted to parallel the treatment of Black people from the sixteenth century to present day and their struggles caused by slavery, the school-to-prison pipeline, over policing, and the fight for civil rights.
Keywords
magical realism, genie duty, genie, trial, enslavement, prison system
Subject Categories
Fiction | Other English Language and Literature
Copyright
© Savannah S. Franklin
Recommended Citation
Franklin, Savannah S., "Genie Duty" (2024). MSU Graduate Theses/Dissertations. 3980.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/3980
