Love Week and Other Stories

This is a collection of four stories, two of which are short and two of which (so far) fall into the nebulous category of the long short story. All are works in progress. The stories focus much on moments of small, fraught drama between characters who have strong, if ill-defined, feelings about each other. The protagonists are confused, obsessive types who attempt, with very limited success, to understand their own feelings and motivations—to distinguish between delusion and truthful perception. Prominent themes include romantic longing, jealousy, loneliness, self-awareness, egotism, and responsibility for others. On the sociopolitical level, the stories are concerned with issues of economics, social class, gender identity, and racism, as filtered through the perceptions, feelings, and thoughts of white, primarily heterosexual, working-class Americans. Finally, as explorations of intersections between ideology and psychology, the stories explore ways political discourses and institutionalized modes of perception inform and shape the imaginations of individuals as citizens, workers, lovers, and family members.English, Department o