Summer is Short, Read a Story!

HarperPerennial celebrates the short story this summer. Buy some. Read some. Talk some.

Do you have a favorite short story? Tell me which one it is and why you like it so much. Do you write short stories? If it's online, share the link with me. Do you advocate reading short stories? If yes, let us know why. I know a lot of readers who aren't great fans of the short story format, myself included, tell us what we're missing! Do you have a source for good short stories online? Share the link!

I’ve got a copy of Petina Gappah's "An Elegy for Easterly" to give away for the best comment.


Petina Gappah is the voice of Zimbabwe. In this astonishingly powerful debut collection, she dissects with real poignancy the lives of people caught up in a situation over which they have no control, as they deal with spiralling inflation, power cuts and financial hardship - a way of life under Mugabe's regime - and cope with issues common to all people everywhere; failed promises, disappointments and unfulfilled dreams. Compelling, unflinching and tender, "An Elegy for Easterly" is a defining book, and a stunning portrait of a country in chaotic meltdown.

Have a happy summer everyone!

An update:

Now you can all listen to Petina Gappah's interview on NPR. It also features an excerpt from everyone's favorite story, "The Mupandawana Dancing Champion" so you can get a feel for her writing style.

******* My sincere most apologies for taking so long to pick a winner, but with summer here the days tend to fly by so very quickly. There were so many good comments that I decided I had to draw for the giveaway, and the winner is.......... drum roll please............. Lorraine!*************

Lorraine, please write me with your address, so I can mail you out a copy as soon as I can, thank you!

Gringo: Coming of Age in Latin America by Chesa Boudin

Scribner, April 2009

Hardcover, 240 pages




I remember myself at 18...all I wanted to do was to explore the world and then to write of my discoveries, but back then, growing up in India, it really wasn't the thing to do, instead, it was the time to focus on finishing university and to concentrate getting a well-paying job. How different things were for American student Chesa Boudin. When he turned 18 in 1999 he enrolled in a Spanish immersion class in rural Guatemala...not finished with his South American experiment he applied for a Rotary International Ambassadorial S'ship which sent him to Chile in 2001. From there he traveled to Argentina at the height of their financial meltdown; to Venezuela where he worked in the Presidential Palace; to the jungles of Colombia on a human rights mission, and the mines of Bolivia. He also traveled steerage on a riverboat along the length of the Amazon. This voyage is documented in his fine book Gringo: A Coming-of-Age in Latin America.

Before I go further you should know that this young man is the child of former members of the radical political group Weather Underground, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, so it is not unusual to see him detailing leftist political shifts in Latin America as they happened in the '90's...but always running parallel to this political commentary is Boudin's own personal journey as he comes of age in Latin America.

Perhaps one of the most profound accounts in the book comes from his time in Bolivia when he visits a mine worked by Bolivians desperate for the scraps that the Spanish conquistadores left behind:

These miners, and how many thousands more like them, were working under conditions that couldn't have improved much since the Spanish colonial era. There were no bathrooms, no drinking water, no food. And at the shaft opening where they dumped tons of mineral slag every day for sorting, I had seen plenty of young boys hard at work-- age is difficult to estimate when in a different country but they were prepubescent, of that I was sure. My own physical discomfort began to seem paltry in comparison with their daily trauma. I was appalled. Sitting in the mine shaft that day I couldn't understand how anyone could subject themselves, much less their young sons to this suicidal work. And for what? A starvation wage? The dream of finding a few ounces of silver the Spanish left behind? I began to regret going to the mines at all. Maybe my being there only added to the workers' humiliation. They had generously invited me into their hellish world, deep inside the earth. All I could offer them in exchange was a cheap present of a few sticks of dynamite.

I also enjoyed his keen political insights into Venenzuela and the era of Chavez. While one gets the impression that Boudain approves of Chavez overall, he has some criticisms as well. As he said in an interview:

I have criticisms of the Chavez government that the Chavistas don’t welcome. There is a lot of corruption in Venezuela and a lot of crime in the streets. The government has not made genuine progress in those two areas, and recently Chavez devoted a lot of time and energy to reforming the Constitution so he could stay in office longer, legally. I thought they should have spent more time developing new leadership.

Why should you read this book? After a decade of dictatorships in the '80's, Latin America is now experimenting with democracy... people at the grassroots level are learning to participate in the political process and bringing to power, in a big way, socialist leaders who have promised to make life better for its downtrodden citizens and to a large extent they have kept their word. Democracy is being reinvented in Bolivia, Venezuela and elsewhere. Ecuador isn’t as far along in its own process but it’s coming along. All over the continent there is more grass roots participation in political movements than there has been for a very long time. What better time then to read about and be aware of the countries that makeup the continent to the south of us?

Boudin has attempted a very earnest and readable book on his time in South America...it is a travelogue but reads more like socio-political commentary. Either way, it's a very enjoyable read and recommend to any and all with an interest in South America.

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• 
  
• Publisher: Random House (Feb 3 2009)

Contemporary literature by Chinese writers and others is filled to overflowing with wonderful works set in the time period of the Cultural Revolution and then, the more recent Tiananmen Square era of Chinese history, however, it is the period between these two mammoth events which marks the setting for Yiyun Li's stunning debut novel "The Vagrants".

It is somewhere in the late 1970's, actually March 21, 1979 to be precise, and an announcement has been made in a poor town of China called "Muddy River" that a young woman, called Gu Shan has renounced her Communist/Red Guard ties and will be executed for her dissent. On the day of her execution Gu Shan is presented onstage, her neck bloody where her vocal cords had been cut (to prevent her from shouting out counter revolutionary slogans) before being hauled off to her death.

The novel then proceeds to follow the lives of some of the citizens of Muddy River who attend the denunciation ceremony and as we read on we see the effect that this execution has on the community as a whole.

"The Vagrants" was inspired by the real case of a condemned woman whose kidneys were removed before (to be donated to a highly placed party official), and body mutilated after, her execution. Although this central event around which the book revolves is in itself is so shocking and riveting, it is the complexity and the depth of Yiyun Li's characters that make this book so interesting. For instance, there's 19-year old Bashi, a young, sexually curious "good-for-nothing", kind of person. Some critics have unfairly referred to him as a pedophile, but I think he was more of a simpleton longing to love and be loved...I think he just felt more comfortable around younger people because they were kinder to him. Then there's 12-year old Nini, deformed at birth on account of a kicking her pregnant mother received at the hands of the condemned Shan Gu. The incongruous love story between Nini and Bashi is probably the sweetest, most tender portion in the book.

We are also introduced to the Huas, former beggars, now trash collectors who in their younger years sometimes salvaged and raise abandoned babies,only to be forced, ultimately, to give up all of their adoptive daughters. It took me a while to figure out that they were the "Vagrants" of the story. There is also Kai, an anchorwoman of the propaganda department's daily loudspeaker broadcasts – but who puts her privileged life at risk by being one of the leaders of the protest after Shan Gu's (who was her former classmate) execution. The smaller characters are no less interesting...a child who betrays his father; another who kicks dogs; a man who desecrates corpses and so on.

Like Gu Shan, Kai's character was also based on a real-life character, who led a protest for the executed woman and who was then executed herself.

So what did I think of the novel? I think Yiyun Li does a splendid job of painting for the reader life in post-Mao China. We are buoyed by the stirrings of a democratic revival, but alas, it is short-lived and the people soon go back to their depraved, tormented lives. I guess, what I kept looking for, but never really found, was a few moments of happiness in all that grimness, a glimmer of hope in that tremendous bleakness. Just when I thought the lives of some of the characters were about to improve, things suddenly get worse for them. It is a very grim novel....lots of misery, sadness, cruelty and depravity and offers little in the way of optimism about Chinese society. Still, let that not keep you from reading this book...perhaps as we read about what it felt like to live in such a totalitarian society we will find gratitude in our hearts for the lives we lead currently.

About the Author: Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, O Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. The Vagrants is her debut novel.

Tokyo Fiancée by Amelie Nothomb

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Europa Editions (December 30, 2008)

"From the age of three to eighteen, the Japanese study as though possessed. From the age of twenty-five until they retire, they work like maniacs. From the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-five, they are only too aware they have been granted a unique interval: this is their chance to blossom..."Amelie Nothomb writing in "Tokyo Fiancée"

Nothomb writes this to explain the phenomenon of "train-station" universities in Japan. Train-station universities are as numerous (yes, you guessed it) train stations and most students visit campus just to meet up with friends or to model their latest outfits...academics is the last thing on their minds and because the syllabi at these universities are student-friendly, most everyone breezes through their courses.

The novel "Tokyo Fiancee" is filled with other such cultural tidbits about Japan and the Japanese, but that is not all you should be reading this for, it is also a tale of sweet but largely unrequieted love between the author, a Francophone Belgian, visiting Japan to refresh her Japanese language skills and to teach French to Japanese students and Rinri a young Japanese man, totally in love with the French language and by extension, anyone who spoke la Francaise. To Rinri, being able to express himself in French gave him license to indulge his inadmissible feelings of love...something he couldn't have done in Japanese or to a Japanese woman as it is impolite in Japanese society to talk of love. In Japan, love is the stuff of literature, not real life.

Amelie is completely charmed with Rinri and the sweet love and concern he shows for her, but when Rinri starts to press the issue of marriage Amelie gets uncomfortable and hastens to find a way out (and I thought it was mostly men that had trouble with with the "C-word"!) No wonder then, the publishers have described this as a contemporary love story, where the woman's love of independence trumps her desire to be loved and needed.

Amelie, in this sweet autobiographical novel, says what she experienced for Rinri can best be explained using the Japanese term, "Koi"which is understood as a relationship in which a couple likes one another enough to be intimate but one that does not come with the trappings of love - a relationship based on camaraderie and sexual desire rather than romance. Do we have the equivalent of "Koi" in the English language? I am curious to find out!

This is a wisp of a book, only 152 pages, but a very worthy read. Nothomb is a very entertaining writer with a mischievous sense of humor. She also skillfully uses the linguistic and cross-cultural misunderstandings between herself and Rinri to offer fun insights into Japanese traditional culture...the ending is exquisitely tender,I had tears in my eyes!

If you like "Tokyo Fiancee" you might also want to read Nothomb's "Fear and Trembling", about a sadistic coworker who instructs her in the rigid hierarchies of office life. "F & T" is drawn from Nothomb's time working at a large Japanese corporation.

Honolulu: A Novel by Alan Brennert

• Hardcover: 368 pages
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• Publisher: St. Martin's Press;
• 
  
• Author: Alan Brennert
  

Scared yet excited, fatigued but energized, Regret and a group of young picture brides from Korea look out from a cabin window as the old ship they had boarded in Yokohama, Japan pulls into the Port of Honolulu, Hawai'i. Each girl expects to see a young, nice-looking gentleman of means (as per photos received) so imagine their shock and horror even when they discover that instead of handsome young men they are greeted by a motley group of wizend older men with skin as tough as hide revealing that the owner of that skin was not a scholarly man who had a white-collar job but one that had to work hard in the open. One of the girls is so overcome with disappointment and horror that she uses whatever money she has left to board the ship back to Japan and then Korea. The other picture brides are not so lucky and they, including Regret, disembark the ship, marry the men waiting for them and spend the next few years enduring the tough life of sugarcane plantation workers in Hawai'i.

After Regret is beaten up by her husband several times (and miscarries due to the beatings) she runs away to Honolulu , shrugs off her unfortunate moniker "Regret", takes on a new name "Jin" (gem) and in her new avatar she becomes a seamstress, mending clothes for hookers in order to keep herself afloat. Jin's story follows a lot of twists and turns not unlike her adopted country and Brennert does an excellent job of tying Jin's story to the historical events in Hawai'i at that time.

Although this is historical "fiction", Brennert's book feels meticulously and exquisitely researched...it is filled with cultural details of that period - songs, food, clothes, historical events and even historical figures. I have, however, just one quibble with an incident that occurs in the early part of the book:

When Regret was beaten up by her husband for the second time she was advised to go to the Pastor of the Korean Methodist church for resolution, I wonder why Brennert didn't have her go to the local Dong-Hoi instead. According to histories written about the plantations in Honolulu, the Korean plantation workers had banded together to form a mutual aid society called Dong-Hoi with, at its head a judge (voted in by the workers) called Dong-chang. THe Dong-chang ruled in marital disputes and a man beating his wife was seldom tolerated. Also, the Dong-Hoi did not encourage gambling and drinking, infact, they prohibited it, so I am not sure how Mr. Noh, Regret's husband was painted by Brennert as a gambler and drunkard.

But aside from that quibble, "Honolulu" is a wonderfully-written tribute to the people of Hawai'i and while it is primarily the story a story of Jin, the Korean picture bride who had to learn to throw off the Confucian notion that women were worthless, it is also the story of how Asian, Portuguese, Spanish and Filipino workers were brought to Hawai’i by the sugar barons who needed laborers to work on the plantations, thus sowing the seeds for the multi-ethnic society that Hawai'i is today and that America is mirroring. Brennert likes to say, the story of Honolulu is in many ways the story of Barack Obama, and the story of America as well.

Finally, Hawai'i, at some point or another figures on everyone's travel plans...rather than just arming yourself with the usual guide book, why don't you grab a copy of "Honolulu" and learn, through the most wonderful and evocative writing, the history of Hawai'i? Reading and knowing the history of a place can add a different dimension to one's travel there.

This is Alan Brennert's second novel featuring Hawai'i. The first, was an equally wonderful book titled "Moloka'i", which I would recommend very highly too

And now here's a dessert talked about several times in the book. Enjoy!

Pineapple Cream Pie

The filling for this pineapple pie is made with canned crushed pineapple, cream, egg yolks, and sugar. The pie is topped with an egg white meringue. Ingredients: 1/2 cup of butter 1 cup of sugar 1 (15 ounce) can crushed pineapple 3 egg yolks 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 cup of milk or sweet cream 3 egg whites 2 tablespoons sugar Baked 9 inch pie crust Instructions: FILLING: Mix butter, sugar, pineapple and egg yolks in a saucepan. Dissolve cornstarch in milk (or cream) and blend into pineapple mixture. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick. Pour mixture into a cooked and cooled pie shell. MERINGUE TOPPING: Beat egg whites until frothy, then slowly beat in 2 tablespoons of sugar. Beat until the mixture forms stiff peaks. Spread meringue over the pie and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, or until meringue is lightly browned.

Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents by Minal Hajratwala

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 430 pp. $26
Genre: Indian diaspora, memoir, travelogue, history, non-fiction,migration



Sorry it's taken me so long to come up with another review...I have been reading "Leaving India" by Minal Hajratwala and although it's not a door-stopper it's not one of those books you can speed up, hence the delay.

When I first heard about "Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents" by Minal Hajratwala, and what the publishers had to say about it -

Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents . Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram's original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul, Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they came to be spread across five continents and nine countries. Hajratwala ... (more)brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora and its shaping by the historical forces of British colonialism, apartheid, Gandhi's Salt March, and American immigration policy. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

- I thought I would lap all of this up in one sitting...after all....being an Indian myself and with relatives all over the world this could have been my story...but after a great start I found myself easily bored with the book. I just felt there were too many detailed descriptions and anecdotes about far too many members of this humongous family, some of which were nice to read and others, downright boring. The part I liked the best was when Minal turns the microscope on herself and writes about her experience with racism in the US and her coming out to the world and her parents about being a lesbian. It was the part that touched me the most...such a pity I had to wait till the end to read it.

I think you will be well served to just listen to a couple of numerous interviews Hajratwalla has given NPR and other radio stations and, ofcourse, ifyou are still clamoring for more, there is always the book.

Mexican High by Liza Monroy (The Read Your Way Around the World Challenge)

* Publisher: Bantam Books

* Pub. Date: June 2008

* ISBN-13: 9780385523592
* 352pp

*Genre: Autobiographical fiction

I chose Mexican High by Liza Monroy for the "Read Your Way Around The World Challenge" hosted by Global Voices Online because ig would be my first book set in Mexico City. Also, with Obama just having returned from a visit to Mexico I thought it it might be quite a topical read. If you're taking part in the challenge, please don't forget to tag your post with #gvbook09


It's never fun for a kid to have to change schools and it has to be downright frightening for the kid who happens to be a High School senior who is not only called upon to change schools but to live and study in a different country.

Milago Marquez (who, embarrassed by her unusual name, insists on being called Mila) is the only child of a US foreign service worker transferred to Mexico in Milago's final year of High School. As most highly paid expats are wont to do, Mila's mother enrolls her in a fancy International school that caters to American expats and the kids of the Mexican elite.

The school is mostly divided into two groups of kids....US and international students(many from diplomatic families) and the kids of the Mexican elite (government officials,gangsters and businessmen) aka as "fresas". Fresas are rich, designer-clothes wearing, spoiled kids...highly nationalistic,they will only speak Spanish and they look down on anyone who is not rich like them, especially gringos (foreigners, mostly American) It doesn't take long for Mila to figure out that with her normal US upbringing she sticks out like a sore thumb and that in order to become an insider she would have do what the rest of the kids are doing which included getting high, cutting classes,having sex and drinking hard alcohol. So acceptable is it for Mexican teenagers to engage in alcohol-fueled social events that even at their school-council organized "lunch" parties every Friday after school (Cocteles), Bacardi along with other alcohol was the main staple..there was little or no food served.

I had a rather hard time deciphering which year this book was set in. The author mentions "Nirvana" and the grunge look being the craze of that year and from what I remember Nirvana was formed in the early 1990's so I am going to presume that this is when the story was set.

Initially the book did hold me captive...I was appalled and aghast to learn what these kids (most of them as young as 17) did to themselves, and as the mother of two teenage girls I felt compelled to read on. Also, I did enjoy her glimpses into Mexican culture, however, as more and more absurd subplots entered the story, I started to grow tired of our protagonist, her friends and their antics and I literally just thumbed through the last 70 pages of the book.

What you will take away from the book:

a)Perhaps a better understanding (not flattering) of the Mexican elite and their children...of the politics, corruption and violence that exists in that country( It was not uncommon for Mila's classmates to be summoned home during the school day because a family member had been kidnapped or assassinated) ;

b)A visual image of the environs of Mexico City like "Angahuan" a town destroyed by the volcano Paricutin which erupted in 1944 and where people ride horses instead of cars and speak the local Purépecha tongue instead of Spanish; "Villahermosa", a paradise for anthropologists with its remarkable Olmec ruins, the Chiapas one of Mexico's poorest towns with a large population of agrarian Mayans and a trip Real de Catorce, a rural desert town where Huichol Indians go looking for peyote in the surrounding hills to sell to tourists wanting to undertake a mystical peyote pilgrimage,

c)Mexican food (Monroy got me hooked on "Cafe de Olla" (coffee made in earthernpots with cinnamon, brown sugar and clove), "Sincronizadas" ( ham and cheese quesadillas);

d) A keener understanding of the role of a foreign service worker and e) a fond regard for teenagers in North America, who despite their foibles, seem so much more grounded and focused than Mexican teenagers.

Why autobiographical fiction:

Well, like Mila, Liza Monroy is also the daughter of a US foreign service and spent her last few years of High School in Mexico City. According to the author, many of the characters(and the incidents they got embroiled in) are based on people she knew in High School. Since these characters were based on real people I expected them to feel authentic and inspired, instead, many of Monroy's characters feel empty and souless. I was hoping Monroy would use Mila to give us an insider's view of Mexico City, and I suppose she did, but it's a dark view of a tumultuous city through the eyes a rather conflicted, sometimes-stoned 17-year old girl, so I am not sure I can set much store by it.

A warning: While it is set in high school, "Mexican High" is definitely NOT recommended for any reader under 19.

CAFE DE OLLA (MEXICAN SPICED COFFEE)
Categories: Mexican, Beverages
  Yield: 6 servings

3/4 c  Brown sugar, firmly packed
  3 x  Cinnamon sticks
  6 x  Cloves
  6 tb Coffee (NOT instant)
  6 x  Julienne slices orange zest

In a large saucepan, heat 6 cups of water with the brown sugar, cinnamon
sticks, and cloves over moderately high heat until the mixture is hot, but
do not let it boil.  Add the coffee, bring the mixture to a boil, and boil
it, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes.  Strain the coffee through a
fine sieve and serve in coffee cups with the orange zest.