Useful Phrases for Immigrants: Stories (Bakwin Award)
This short story collection moves between mainland China and the Chinese diaspora in the United States, tracing the uncertainty of immigrants and their children, family secrets, and tensions shaped by language and class. Small domestic scenes gradually reveal the pain of displacement and the possibility of renewal.
Work Information
A story collection that captures the quiet but urgent emotions of people living across borders.
The eight stories travel between China and the United States to portray the misunderstandings, losses, and hopes that shape immigrant families. Beneath the brisk conversations, generational and cultural gaps surface with quiet force.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Blair
- Published
- 2018-10-23
- Pages
- 166 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.97 x 1.91 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780932112767
- ISBN-10
- 0932112765
- Price
- 3027 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
In the title story of this timely and innovative collection, a young woman wearing a Prada coat attempts to redeem a coupon for plastic storage bins while her in-laws are at home watching the Chinese news and taking her private phone calls. It is the lively and wise juxtaposition of cultures, generations, and emotions that characterize May-lee Chai’s amazing stories. Within them, readers will find a complex blend of cultures spanning China, the Chinese diaspora in America, and finally, the world at large. With luminous prose and sharp-eyed observations, Chai reveals her characters’ hopes and fears, and our own: a grieving historian seeking solace from an old lover in Beijing, a young girl discovering her immigrant mother's infidelity, workers constructing a shopping mall in central China who make a shocking discovery. Families struggle with long-held grudges, reinvent traditions, and make mysterious visits to shadowy strangers from their past―all rendered with economy and beauty. With hearts that break and sometimes mend, with families who fight and sometimes forgive, the timely stories in Useful Phrases for Immigrants illuminate complicated lives with empathy and passion. Chai's stories are essential reading for an increasingly globalized world.
May-lee Chai is the author of ten books, including the memoir Hapa Girl , a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book; the novel Tiger Girl , which won an Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature; and her original translation from Chinese to English of the 1934 Autobiography of Ba Jin . Her award-winning short prose has been published widely, including in Glimmer Train , Missouri Review , Seventeen , Crab Orchard Review , The Rumpus , ZYZZYVA , Dallas Morning News , Christian Science Monitor , and San Francisco Chronicle . The recipient of an NEA fellowship in prose, Chai is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.
Reviews
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I really enjoyed this book. I have one quibble with the story Ghost Festivals--Pamela Sue Martin was on Dynasty, not Dallas. A good editor should have caught this, which makes me wonder if anyone even fact checks books anymore, especially when real people or events are cited. Overall this was a very satisfying read.
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... and sometimes the twain collide. May-lee Chai's award-winning short story collection is divided between portraits of life in contemporary China and dramas with Chinese-American families. Deftly drawn and with telling detail, Chai navigates the line between "ordinary" American life and a sometimes jarring alien culture, yet she finds the underlying humanity in all her characters.
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I enjoyed this collection except for Fish Boy which was given an award. Quick read and used as a break while reading a long nonfiction.
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Like one of her characters in this intriguing and cinematic short story collection, author May-lee Chai sprinkles secrets like breadcrumbs, drawing the reader into a complex tapestry of people’s lives, with scenes that stay with you long after you close the book.