Wearisome Women

Wearisome Women is a collection of short stories that follow women with minimally intertwining lives in West Texas. This collection explores themes of autonomy, religion, family, platonic and romantic relationships, mental health, death, and the general complexities of womanhood. In this collection I intend to explore the borders of time in short fiction, and I plan to have each story take place in the span of only one day, in the present moment. The first story, The Anatomy of a Perfect Woman, takes readers along a typical day with an unnamed narrator living in the throws of a domineering, religiously repressive relationship where she takes on the role of a traditional, Christian wife and mother. Her sarcastic tone and sardonic energy carries the narrative and pulls the story along. Readers watch as she fairly quickly slips into insanity as the day carries on—until ultimately the night ends and her identity is revealed with in a quite literally backstabbing way. The collection continues with God’s Fruit which also takes place in the span of one single day. The narrator experiences death, self discovery, love and longing as she navigates her role in the after life and all of the ways she has disparaged herself through her life.