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The Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven is a collection of stories about existence along fault lines. Its protagonists traverse divides of religious and national identity, gender and sexuality, and familial role. They stray—sometimes as far as they can—from the burdens of home, history, and memory. Capturing unlikely and transformative encounters, often between strangers, this collection itself travels around a dusty refugee camp in Israel’s southern desert, in and around New York City, the beaches of Goa and Phuket, Jerusalem’s flashpoint Dome of the Rock, the Syrian-Israeli border, and many more locales real and invented along the way. The stories capture a broad swath of historical and personal conflict, from the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, to the queer awakening of a young Orthodox Jewish bride, to a broken family grappling with the echoes of the Yemenite Babies Affair. Often centering the interiority of a singular figure straining against the confines of their community of origin, the narratives in The Yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven build up to a succession of suspended moments, just before lives swell up, or crumble, or bear down into the intricately striated layers of the Land.

This thesis, which takes the form of a young adult novel following the journey of a teenage girl discovering her queerness, investigates how sexual and personal shame interact with trauma, and how a lack of transparency in sex ed can damage both familial and romantic relationships between women. Over the course of the novel, sixteen year old Dell navigates interweaving struggles that contribute to her persistent depression and depersonalization. First is the destruction of her self-image and personal relationship with her mother Anne after a boyfriend—whom she had kept secret from her mother—posted nude photos of her online. Second is the revelation that her mother has been hiding family secrets from her, including the existence of an aunt named Julie. Third is Dell’s discovery of her bisexuality as she develops an attraction to a teenage girl named Ivy, who happens to be Anne’s boyfriend’s daughter. This forms the main crux of the novel, as Dell is unable to accept the development of new sexual feelings when constant messaging from society, and from a traumatized mother, have reinforced for her the misconception that she already experiences more sexual feelings than girls are supposed to. Through the novel’s side characters, issues of privilege, racism, gender roles, and the discovery of other sexualities, such as asexuality, are also explored. The thesis uses the young adult genre to better investigate how trauma during the teen years affects the formation of a personal identity and sense of self, focusing specifically on how women form identity in a society that punishes the concept of women having control of their own sexual expression. Ultimately, the book delivers acceptance to all characters at the end of their journeys and repairs the fractured family units, subverting the common trope of queer narratives ending unhappily. It aims to serve as a hopeful story for teenage readers starting to discover who they are. 2999-01-01

A cycle of short stories exploring a community in rural West Virginia