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Translations from the Mother-Tongue: A collection of original short stories
Abstract
This is a collection of twelve original short stories with the broad unifying motif of motherhood. Each of these stories contains one or more characters who is a mother. These stories depict relationships between women and their friends, women and their husbands or ex-husbands, women and work, women and parents, women and children. Some of them are single mothers. One is expecting her first child. Another is entering mid-life and the prospect of an empty nest. The women in these stories often juggle multiple roles as wives, working mothers, professionals, academics, writers, students, yet persistently the conflicts of biological destiny return to confront them. The stories contain, as well, literary and artistic motifs, preoccupations with nature, with political and social concerns, with academia, with language and communication. The settings of all of the stories is the heartland of America, the Midwest. Several are set in Nebraska or Iowa, some more specifically in the cities of Lincoln or Omaha. Although based on the raw material of personal experience, some combination of memory and imagination, to use Nebraska-born novelist Wright Morris's definition of fiction, has been the basis for the genesis and construction of each of the stories. The collection is prefaced by an Introduction which traces the writer's origins, the primary influences on her development as a writer, and a more general philosophy of her art. The title story, "Translations From the Mother-Tongue," was contained in a portfolio of the author's writing which received the John R. Vreeland graduate creative writing award at UN-L. This story has also received the Mari Sandoz Prairie Schooner Fiction Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination in 1984. Some of the stories in this collection have been published individually in North American Review, Smackwarm, Grain of Sand, Nebraska English Counselor, and Laurus.
Subject Area
Literature
Recommended Citation
Duggin, Lorraine Jean, "Translations from the Mother-Tongue: A collection of original short stories" (1988). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI8818615.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI8818615