Minimum Rage
Presentation Type
Creative Process Analysis
Release Option
Event
Description
My project will be on the creative process behind my Magical Realism short story called Minimum Rage. My goal with this story was to use the world of superheroes to critique how the capitalist system neglects society’s essential workers. I will detail the process of how I created a world of working-class superheroes and the struggles that define them. To research my story’s world, I talked to people with working-class experience and included my own experience at low-level positions in big corporations. I learned about how companies treated their employees during a pandemic and how hard it can be for an employee to communicate with top-level management to generate needed change. I compiled this information and used it to create a world that is an exaggeration of reality, but one that has many characteristics that hit close to home. For the characters, I thought about the individual struggles working-class people might face. For example, some people work hard despite having no raise in the foreseeable future and others lose part of their own identity because they are too focused on work. I also thought about how a lead character in this hostile world might act, using that to build her actions and her eventual breakdown. From here, I place superpowered beings in these shoes to show that despite having superpowers, they are powerless against corporations. And if people with powers are powerless, what makes those without them any different?
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Faculty Mentor
Prof. Laura Valeri
Department of Primary Presenter's Major
Department of Writing & Linguistics
Primary Presenter's Major(s)
Writing & Linguistics
Location
Virtual Symposium
Symposium Year
2021
Minimum Rage
Virtual Symposium
