Abstract:
This thesis is a selection of chapters from my novel titled, The Sewer Bride. The Sewer
Bride is an exploration of first-generation femininity and independence told from
alternating perspectives. Alison (Al) Afreh is twenty-three years old and living in
present-day Washington D.C. She lives like many other American girls her age: she goes
to work, lives with a roommate, gets drunk on the weekends, and is engaged in a pseudoplatonic
sexual relationship with her college friend Simon. Her American lifestyle and
romantic choices are placed under a microscope when her mother Esther “temporarily”
moves in with her. Novel chapters in the present-day are narrated from Al’s point of
view. Every other chapter flashes back to Esther’s life, defining the woman she once was,
and depicting her marriage with Kwesi. In addition to these chapters, the fictional myth
of “The Sewer Bride” (a child bride who lives in sewers only to serve men) functions as a
prologue to the novel and an extended metaphor of Esther’s life and Al’s number one
fear.
