Waiting For Mr Kim And Other Stories

Download or read book Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories written by Carol Roh Spaulding and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2023-09-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of linked stories follows four generations of the Songs, a Korean American family, beginning in 1924 just prior to the Immigration Act and extending to near the end of the century. Linked stories, or stories that form a story cycle, are a common book-length form seen in Asian American literature that accommodates multiple perspectives across generations and locations. Through this story cycle, patterns emerge as cultural identity and individuality, often in tension with one another, shape choices and outcomes. With these stories, Carol Roh Spaulding charts shifting definitions of “Americanness” across time through the arc of a family narrative. She also explores desire and belonging as articulated, in turns, by the mother, father, granddaughter, great-grandson, and even a ghost child who died after a tragic accident. But these linked stories center on the life experiences of Gracie Song. They follow her from girlhood to young motherhood, through her children’s teenage years, and finally to her elderly solitude, when to her great astonishment she finds romance with a younger man and reconciliation with an estranged daughter—both unexpected gifts of later life.

Download or read book Please Come Back To Me written by Jessica Treadway and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-09-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please Come Back To Me is another remarkable collection by an author the New York Times has called “a writer with an unsparing bent for the truth.” In “The Nurse and the Black Lagoon” a woman tries to understand why her teenage son has been accused of a disturbing crime. In “Testimony” an adult daughter visiting her father does everything she can to keep herself from remembering what she believes she cannot bear. A man returns to his hometown in “Dear Nicole” to face the realization that he married the wrong woman out of misplaced guilt. “Oregon” portrays the internal struggle of a woman who, having years ago betrayed a secret entrusted to her by her best friend, is tempted to repeat the mistake with the same friend’s daughter. And in the collection’s novella, “Please Come Back To Me,” a young widow seeks faith and comfort—in both natural and supernatural realms—after her husband’s death leaves her alone to care for their infant son. On the surface, Jessica Treadway’s stories offer realistic portrayals of people in situations that make them question their roles as family members, their ability to do the right thing, and even their sanity. But Treadway’s psychic landscapes are tinged with a sense of the surreal, inviting readers to recognize—as her characters do—that very little is actually as it seems.

Download or read book The Edge of Marriage written by Hester Kaplan and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kaplan, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, writes potent short stories in which she puts seemingly solid marriages to the test, pushing them to their breaking point by force of sorrow and tragedy. Disease and accidents often drive couples to the brink of separation and her characters find themselves in emotional free fall.

Download or read book If We Were Electric written by Patrick Earl Ryan and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If We Were Electric’s twelve stories celebrate New Orleans in all of its beautiful peculiarities: macabre and magical, muddy and exquisite, sensual and spiritual. The stunning debut collection finds its characters in moments of desire and despair, often stuck on the verge of a great metamorphosis, but burdened by some unreasonable love. These are stories about missed opportunities, about people on the outside who don’t fit in, about the consequences of not mustering enough courage to overcome the binds. In “Feux Follet,” an old man’s grief attracts supernatural lights in the dark Louisiana swamps. An exploding transformer’s raw, unnerving energy in the title story matches the strange, ferocious temper of an unlucky hustler. “Blackout” sets the profound numbness of a young man physically abused by his mentally unstable partner beside the meaningful beauty of an unexpected moment of joy with someone else. The teenage narrator in “Before Las Blancas” is so overwhelmed by his sexuality that he abandons everything and everyone he’s known to live in a happy illusion . . . in Mexico. And “Where It Takes Us” is a poignant, understated snapshot of a gay man who accompanies his straight, HIV-positive brother to the race track to bond again.

Download or read book Bad Kansas written by Becky Mandelbaum and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kansas boys -- The golden state -- A million and one Marthas -- Go on, eat your heart out -- The house on Alabama Street -- Night of indulgences -- Stupid girls -- Thousand-dollar decoy -- First love -- Queen of England -- Bald bear -- Acknowledgment

Download or read book Japa and Other Stories written by Iheoma Nwachukwu and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2024-09 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These eight brutally beautiful stories are struck full of fragmented dreams, with highly developed thieves, misadventurers, and displaced characters all heaving through a human struggle to anchor themselves in a new home or sometimes a new reality. This book is about young Nigerian immigrants who bilocate, trek through the desert, become temporary Mormons, sneak through Russia, and yearn for new life in strange new territories that force them to confront what it means to search for a connection far from home. Japa and Other Stories came out of a struggle Iheoma Nwachukwu faced when trying to orient himself in the United States of 2017 to 2021, when attitudes toward immigrants suddenly shifted. The Japa characters explored in this book are immigrants who have no plans to return to their home country—for voluntary reasons—although they retain a strong connection to home.

Download or read book Thieves I've Known written by Tom Kealey and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these wondrously strange and revealing stories, Tom Kealey chronicles the struggles and triumphs of the young and marginalized as they discover many ways of growing up. Their names are Merrill, Omar, Shelby, Laika, Winston, and Toomey, but most people don't see them. They are boxers in training and the children of fishermen. They are altar boys in a poverty-stricken parish. They are assistant groundskeepers and assistant camel-keepers. They travel with the circus, care for disabled siblings, steal police cars, and retrieve the stolen boots of a priest. Ranging in abode from Puget Sound, Washington, to Pamlico Sound, North Carolina, they are abandoned yet courageous and plucky children and teenagers living on the edges of society. Thieves I've Known is a collection of powerful, moving stories about the lives of a redemptive and peculiar cast of young characters who become easy to know and difficult to forget.