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Full text of this paper is not available in the ETD Center. Copies may be available for inter-library loan from Bowling Green State University or may be available for purchase from Proquest/UMI

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The Frailty of Fruit

Geiger, Kelly
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168000590884082

Abstract Details

2023, Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, Creative Writing.
The Frailty of Fruit is a young adult post-apocalyptic thriller, set in a far future subterranean farming community. The novel follows protagonist Qari Höfler, a reluctant tomato farmer, who must develop a hybrid tomato to earn her family’s stewardship or be banished to the Deep Dark. Her 33rd great-grandfather's tomato strain cured violence. But because their cultural understanding of violence didn’t include sexual violence, Qari develops an asexually reproductive strain with the naïve hope of curing gender. Little does she know, she’s not the only one with the seeds of that idea. Told in intertwining narratives, a second protagonist Iona also must race against time to beat Qari at her own hybrid game. But once the two of them find each other, with the help of a humanoid sexbot-turned-scientist named Misty, Qari and Iona realize that finding a place where they could grow together was the point all along. Told in the dystopian tradition of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Frailty of Fruit draws upon themes of reproductive justice, hegemony, posthumanism, and the subaltern. Written in a traditional narrative structure, the novel invents an accessible story with textured social imaginings. It posits a poetic truth that utopias will always become dystopias, that will then become utopias, and so on. Like nature, human social conditions have birth and death cycles. In this way, the novel employs contemporary feminist methodologies which utilize post-structural theories to challenge the notions of stable concepts. The ground, literally and conceptually, is always shifting.
Reema Rajbanshi, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Lawrence Coates, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
286 p.
Literature; Modern Literature
novel; gender; feminism; reproductive justice; dystopia; utopia; hegemony; post-structuralism; posthumanism; subaltern; artificial intelligence; plant humanities; hybridity; harem

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Geiger, K. (2023). The Frailty of Fruit [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168000590884082

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Geiger, Kelly. The Frailty of Fruit. 2023. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168000590884082.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Geiger, Kelly. "The Frailty of Fruit." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu168000590884082

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu168000590884082