Semester of Graduation
Spring 2023
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
The Inherent Danger of Repetition consists of seven short stories. The collection is a meditation on borders and liminality, where stories are set in towns and cities that do not exist. The places here are unnamed, imagined locations that exist somewhere between Korea and the US. Strange and inexplicable things occur in this middle space. Identities warp and blur—sometimes vanishing entirely.
A translator finds himself forced to life his life as his missing twin. He sits by the hospital bed as his dying father calls him by the wrong name. A disgraced doctor, named only as P, is exiled to a hospital in the province. The town is overrun with pigs, domestic and feral. By the end, he can no longer tell where he ends and where the pigs begin. A pastor’s wife is struck with god-disease, the propensity to become a Korean shaman.
Chang Joon An is influenced by Korean writers, such as Kim Yi-deum, Kim Hye-soon, and Pyeon Hae-young. He is particularly interested in the way that contemporary Korean writing intersects with the Gothic South. Having moved across continents every four years since he was nine, Chang Joon utilizes his unique perspective to flit between different literary traditions and perspectives. His imagined and speculative locations owe much Borges, while his fascination with work, the Grotesque, and the body is equally inspired by the likes of Flannery O’Connor and Han Kang. The collection blends these influences to create a no-man’s land of identity, language, and names that shift and refract.
Date
4-5-2023
Recommended Citation
An, Chang Joon, "The Inherent Danger of Repetition" (2023). LSU Master's Theses. 5754.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/5754
Committee Chair
Davis, Jennifer S.
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_theses.5754