Chimaera: A Collection

Chimaera is a collection of short stories as well as excerpts from a novel in progress, Cassandra & Charon. While this collection bears some resemblance to a short story cycle, these selections are not intended to be published together outside of this dissertation. Nevertheless, this dissertation features these selections side by side as these stories and chapters overlap thematically and consequently create resonances that would not exist otherwise. The short stories predominately feature Chinese American characters often as outsiders or third parties to other relationships. Other stories also feature retellings of classic stories including Goldilocks, Snow White, and Dracula, at times borrowing structure and narrative elements, but also re-shaping these stories through a Chinese American lens. The novel is composed of sections or chapters that similarly feature two Asian-American characters: Anna, or Cassandra, as she is known to her clients, is an agoraphobic writer who has the ability to see the future; and Charon, a mysterious figure who shepherds “tourists” to a Chicago that has become thoroughly haunted by ghosts