Heterotopia

This project is a collection of seven short stories unified not by plot continuity but by location. Each story takes place in a space that reflects Michel Foucault's writings on the concept of heterotopia, spaces that exist as worlds within a world, marked by dissonance and unreality. These unsettling settings, that of a movie theatre, a museum, an airport, a library, a bathroom, a hospital, and a garden, function both as a backdrop and as a means of exploring the way in which these environments influence behavior and identity. Within these environments, each story examines the different expressions of trauma and mental illness in women, in particular, how the stimuli and atmosphere of these heterotopic spaces contribute to the ways these feelings and experiences manifest in women, how the psychological disjunction experienced correlates with the spatial disjunction of the setting. Influenced by intersectional, feminist, queer, postcolonial, and affect theory, the collection considers how identities which have been declared "othered" interact with "othered" environments. The stories employ varied forms and narrative perspectives to create a textured reading experience that reflects both the thematic content and the variety of personal experience. Each narrative presents a different woman or women navigating a heterotopic space in ways literal and figurative, from an airport traveler confronting surveillance during Persian New Year to a movie theatre employee becoming trapped in her job in more ways than one. Together, the stories suggest that spaces deemed at odds with society provide a place for those also deemed at odds with society to recognize and understand the fractures of the self, offering the possibility of transformation. I wrote this collection because I thought it was an approachable way for others to experience struggles they may not otherwise understand in settings that they have their own familiarity with.