LOW

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of my parents' decision to emigrate from apartheid South Africa in the early 1980s for political/ideological reasons, and within that context, the role and function of "apologist" stories. To that point, the thesis meditates on the limits of and what it means to tell "true" stories, in ways that will hopefully reflect on the guiding principles of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). These themes are developed across short essays, poems that privilege sound and linguistic play, and longer poems that work within both abstract representational and epic narrative modes. I plan to develop this thesis into a longer manuscript that more explicitly draws connections to the TRC, continues my parents' narrative into the present day, and also reflects more directly on the racial politics of contemporary America after the death of Michael Brown.