Short Stories Archives - Page 5 of 17

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton [in Booklist]

24 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Preface any storytelling format with “traditional,” and audiences will have no expectations of feminist agency. Thankfully, prizewinning Japanese writer Aoko Matsuda imagines reclamation and brilliantly transforms fairy tales and folk legends into empowering exposés, adventures, manifestos. The 17 stories – adroitly translated by UK-based Polly Barton...

Likes by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum [in Booklist]

31 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Repost, Short Stories

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s (Ms. Hempel Chronicles, 2008) prowess here lies in her ingenious ability to elevate seemingly minor moments into the pivotal crux of a narrative. Take, for example, in “Julia and Sunny,” perhaps the most affecting of Bynum’s nine stories, “a small square of silky, pale blue material” that...

Igifu by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump [in Shelf Awareness]

28 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW A Rwandan exile living in France, Scholastique Mukasonga pulled from her extraordinary life to write two notable memoirs, Cockroaches and The Barefoot Woman (a 2019 National Book Award Translated Literature finalist). Autobiographical elements continue to haunt her exquisite collection, Igifu, through five wrenching stories. Born in 1956, Mukasonga had a...

Addis Ababa Noir edited by Maaza Mengiste [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories

Born in Addis Ababa, NEA fellow Maaza Mengiste (The Shadow King) takes readers home to "a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory." As one of the editors for Akashic Books' ongoing Noir series, Mengiste gathers "some of Ethiopia's...

145th Street: Short Stories by Walter Dean Myers [in School Library Journal]

28 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW This 20th-anniversary edition features a 10-reader cast performing the original 10 stories, with additional "Bonus Content" that includes a dozen "Tributes" by literary luminaries, including Christopher Myers, Lois Lowry, and Jason Reynolds, extolling the late, great Walter Dean Myers's enduring legacy to diverse children's...

The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

24 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

An English-language debut, The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud is a label-defying collection of Kuniko Tsurita's gekiga – literally, "dramatic pictures," referring to more serious graphic work for adult audiences. Organized chronologically from 1966 to 1980, the historical compilation includes Tsurita's early magazine submissions as a...

No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories by Jayant Kaikini, translated by Tejaswini Niranjana [in Booklist]

24 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indian, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian, Translation

Seemingly quotidian lives centered in Mumbai fill Jayant Kaikini’s second translated collection, the first book in translation to win the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. These 16 stories, written from 1986 to 2006, were selected and translated by the award-winning Tejaswini Niranjana, who in...

The Swamp by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Yoshiharu Tsuge abandoned making manga in 1987, and yet his legacy has only expanded – deservedly so – during the decades since, far beyond his native Japan. Considered one of the originators of the graphic 'I-novel' (shishōsetsu), he eventually "abandoned what had been considered one...

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance by Zora Neale Hurston, edited by Genevieve West [in Booklist]

03 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Black/African American, Fiction, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Armed with significant acting credits and plentiful lauds, Aunjanue Ellis makes her audiobook debut as the voice of one of the 20th-century’s most celebrated, iconic writers. In a word, her performance is stupendous. Texas Woman’s University professor Genevieve West’s definitive new collection features, for...

Bluebeard’s First Wife: Stories by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

21 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Bestselling Korean author Ha Seong-nan and award-winning Canadian translator Janet Hong are two-for-two at spectacular pairing, repeating the successful partnership of Ha’s collection, Flowers of Mold (2019), with another sensational, 11-story collaboration. The titular “Bluebeard’s First Wife” features a 31-year-old woman who marries a...

Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som [in Booklist]

27 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Repost, Short Stories, South Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW A woman goes out for her regular evening walk on the beach, contemplating her relationship with her husband, until she sees a mermaid washed up on the shore. And here text and graphics suddenly diverge: the words reveal a recent affair, while the frames...

We Had No Rules by Corinne Manning [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Corinne Manning’s author statement couldn’t be clearer. “I had no idea how to write authentically until the day when I typed the sentence ‘Oh, f*ck it. I’m writing lesbian fiction.’” That declaration became “Gay Tale,” one of 11 stories in this collection, her first,...

Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories by Maria Reva [in Shelf Awareness]

10 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Short Stories, Ukrainian, Ukrainian American

Ivansk Street, Number 1933, in Kirovka, Ukraine, seems be an exact address, but the town council's clerk insists "that building does not exist." Constructed last year, "someone seemed to have forgotten to connect it to the district furnace," but plenty of people already live there....

Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined by Stephen Fry [in Booklist]

28 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, British, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW British TV-film-stage-even-video-games-actor/comedian/novelist Stephen Fry is a consummate storyteller. Yes, he’s got multiple bestsellers on the page, including this latest: choosing from the godly Greek pantheon certainly provided divine inspiration, replete with the utmost in family dysfunction including bed-hopping (although, who needs beds?!), Sisyphean feats...

Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories by Young-Ha Kim [in Booklist]

11 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Short Stories, Translation

Author Young-Ha Kim, translator Krys Lee (herself an award-winning writer; Drifting House), and actor David Shih repeat the triumvirate success of Kim’s I Hear Your Voice to deliver his latest collection of four chilling, engrossing stories. The eponymous, novella-length “Diary of a Murderer” – the best of an...

How To Pronounce Knife: Stories by Souvankham Thammavongsa [in Library Journal]

10 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Thai American

*STARRED REVIEW In under 200 pages, Canadian poet Souvankham Thammavongsa showcases 14 spectacular stories in her fiction debut. Born to Lao parents in a Thai refugee camp and raised and educated in Toronto, Thammavongsa parses her own culturally amalgamated heritage through most of her narratives here,...

Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana [in Booklist]

30 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Thai, Translation

One of Thailand’s most prominent writers, Pimjai Juklin – who publishes as Duanwad Pimwana – presents 13 resonating stories featuring the everyday lives of Thai citizens of diverse backgrounds, each confronting entrapment physically, emotionally, and socially. In “The Attendant,” an elevator operator enclosed daily in a...

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout [in Booklist]

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr returns for a fourth propitious audiobook pairing with Elizabeth Strout, her second as the title character in this conclusion-of-sorts to the 2008 Pulitzer Prized novel Olive Kitteridge. Both books follow a similar format – both are comprised of 13 interlinked stories mostly...

Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine [in Booklist]

30 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Latina/o/x, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Repost, Short Stories

*STARRED REVIEW A half-dozen Latinx readers voice Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s superb 11-story debut collection, which features mostly Colorado-domiciled Latinx/Indigenous characters hoping, demanding to be seen and acknowledged by a society in which women are routinely dismissed, threatened, and destroyed. Aural aficionados will especially thrill at the “read...

Kitchen Curse: Stories by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker, Tiffany Tsao, Maggie Tiojakin, and Benedict Anderson [in Library Journal]

18 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Indonesian, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Eka Kurniawan, the first Man Booker International Prize-nominated Indonesian writer (he was long-listed in 2016 for Man Tiger), makes his collection-in-English debut, with the majority of the 16 stories translated by Annie Tucker, his PEN/Heim Translation Fund-awarded Beauty Is a Wound translator; three of the...

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