Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

English

Reader 1

Jesslyn Whittell

Reader 2

Leila Mansouri

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2025 Ishita Jayadev

Abstract

Survival Tactics and Other Short Stories is a fictional collection of queer coming of age stories about South Asian American main characters who deal with speculative and monstrous elements that creep into or define their lives in different ways. In Survival Tactics, the main character realizes her and her lover, two college students of color, are literally melding together and turning into one amid the backdrop of a racist predominantly white institution and tries to figure out how to unfuse and leave her lover without going insane. In Rakshasa, a 15 year old high school cheerleader suddenly turns into a demon and has to navigate her newfound monstrosity while attempting to parse through her feelings for her senior best friend who is leaving for college and her boyfriend who is helping her through the process. In Triangle of Misery, two Indian American sisters have unique chronic illnesses, one has her limbs spontaneously turn to sand while the other experiences black outs that are a day-long “absence of light.” As their mother tries to fix the two by taking them to numerous alternative medicine places, the sisters figure out how to navigate their resentful feelings towards each other as they grow into adults. Overall, the collection is an exploration of what it means to be queer and brown whether through monstrosity, familial relationships, or turning into the only other brown student in your class.

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