When people have asked me about my short story collection, Deceit and Other Possibilities, I’ve joked it’s about “model minorities behaving badly.” My characters—immigrants and the children of immigrants—attempt to fake it until they make it, to hold together their family and their identity. The secrets and lies are a mechanism not only for harmony, but also for survival.
Model minorities are said to achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than average. For decades, white conservatives have used the perceived success of Asian Americans as a racial wedge, to minimize the impact of structural racism on blacks and Latinos. See: Harvard admissions lawsuit. See: admissions to elite public high schools in New York.
The myth also turns Asian Americans into a monolith, masking huge variations in language, culture, and educational and economic status within the community.
My collection—now reissued with additional new stories—subverts these stereotypes and expectations. What follows here are books that shatter such myths in ways poignant and funny, dark and light.
This stunning linked short collection moves between Vietnam and Orange County, following the troubled fates of children evacuated in Operation Babylift. I’m still haunted by the robbery gone wrong between the elderly Bac Nguyen and the hoodlum Vinh. Their interiority, histories, and actions belie easy labels.
In this darkly funny novel, a Chinese American comedian pens a letter to his daughter to explain how race and class have warped him—and his sense of humor. You’ll laugh so hard you’ll cry, and then your heart will break.
Also written in the form of a letter to her daughters, the memoir is hilarious, revealing and inspiring, as Wong shares her struggles and victories. The comedian turns the final chapter over to her husband—whom she’s mentioned often in her routine—and he offers a touching coda of his own.
In this dystopian novel, the scheming Asian American striver Mae dreams up a “gestational retreat” that all but imprisons mostly working-class immigrant surrogates. A scathing satire as frightening as it is funny.
Hilarious and poignant, with spot on observations about inter-ethnic and interracial dating, the East Bay versus New York, and stifled aspirations. I kept snapping photos of the comic panels to friends, and handed the book to my husband to read as soon as I finished it.
Vulnerable and biting, this novel about a troubled young heroin addict is unforgettable. Sharma’s untimely death has left many mourning her and the untold stories she might have written.
The ten short stories in this moving debut collection travel the Chinese diaspora. Told with grace and humor, the stories challenge expectations at every turn.
Casey Han—new Princeton grad and daughter of Korean dry cleaners—is figuring out what to make of her life. It’s witty and wry, with sharp observations of New York in the 1990s.
In this witty and fun retelling of Jane Eyre, the half-Korean heroine travels from Queens to Brooklyn to Seoul and back in search of love—and self-discovery. The cultural insights are fascinating.
As the patriarch lays dying in Silicon Valley, his children, ex-wife, and second wife contemplate what his will has in store for them. A page-turner, by turns comic and poignant.
This sprawling debut is poignant, big-hearted, funny and insightful. You can’t help but root for different characters at this Chinese family restaurant, even as they bungle their way into ever more trouble.
As the world struggles to come to terms with the growing COVID-19 crisis, many of us are turning to fiction as a way of understanding the scope of the danger—and, perhaps paradoxically, a way of finding comfort. If the last thing you want to think about right now is global epidemic disease, we get that! But novels can also help people wrap their heads around something that may seem too big and scary to process. If you feel like you’re living in the first pages of a post-apocalyptic story, these books about historical and speculative future pandemics might help you feel less alone. Pick one up, and then wash your hands.
Candace Chen has resigned herself to a soul-crushing 9-to-5 job at a Manhattan publishing house that produces novelty Bibles embellished with semi-precious stones (tacky, but important for later on in the novel). The company outsources the manufacturing to a factory in China whose workers are dying from lung disease because of the dangerous working conditions mining the semi-precious stones. Soon the Shen Fever spreads through the world via the mass-produced cheap junk produced in Chinese factories, turning the population into zombies who are doomed to repeat the same actions until they die. Candace and her band of millennials find refuge in a mall, turning to Google to figure out how to survive the apocalypse (until the internet dies, that is). Sure, Severance is a pandemic-zombie-dystopian-novel, but it’s also a relatable millennial coming-of-age story and an intelligent critique of exploitative capitalism, mindless consumerism, and the drudgery of bullshit jobs.
A plague has taken over a small college town in the middle of nowhere SoCal: “The first stage of sleep is the lightest, the brief letting go, like the skipping of a stone across the water.” One by one, the college students fall asleep into a heightened state of dreaming, but… they don’t wake up. The survivors are forced into quarantine on campus and forbidden from leaving in case they spread the illness to the wider population (sounds familiar?). The Dreamers is a propulsive novel about the lengths we will go to in order to survive.
Novels about what life might be like in the grips of a global epidemic don’t have to be speculative fiction—we’ve already had widespread and deadly worldwide diseases, like the 1918 Spanish flu. They Came Like Swallows is a finely-crafted, understated novel about family dynamics set against a backdrop of illness and fear, as influenza rages through a Midwestern town.
A viral pandemic, the Georgia Flu, has exploded “like a neutron bomb over the surface of the earth,” wiping out 99% of the global population. The Travelling Symphony, made up of musicians and actors, roam from small town to small town (all that remains of North America) in horse-drawn wagons to entertain survivors with concerts and theatrical performances. At one of their stops, their hopes to reunite with two members of their troupe and their newborn baby are dashed when they discover that the town is under the sway of a cult controlled by “The Prophet.” Weaving in flashbacks, Station Eleven is a quietly haunting novel about nostalgia and survival.
This novel is a sequel to Oryx and Crake, which is perhaps better-known (it was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2003). But where Oryx and Crake mostly sets up the circumstances leading up to the “Waterless Flood,” a manmade disease that decimated humanity, The Year of the Flood zeroes in on life after the devastation. How did people try to survive the plague? How do they rebuild, physically and emotionally? Unlike many post-apocalyptic novels (including Oryx and Crake), this one focuses on the experiences of women.
In this haunting, disorienting novel, a city suffers a mysterious epidemic that leaves its victims blind. Quarantined in an empty mental hospital, the sightless patients are subject to violence, exploitation, and fear; the group at the center of the story bands together to escape their confinement, but they can’t escape the collapse of society due to panic and government mishandling.
A plague has transformed the infected population into “skeletons.” The military has purged Zone One of Lower Manhattan of the living dead and now they are attempting to restore civilization through propaganda (American Phoenix Rising) and a cheesy anthem (“Stop! Can You Hear the Eagle Roar? ‘Theme from Reconstruction’”). The novel follows the very passive Mark Spitz, a former social media manager turned zombie-sweeper (both of which he’s just mediocre at), as he narrates his post-apocalyptic life into a non-functional Bluetooth. A dense and darkly humorous novel, Zone One leaves readers questioning “who are the real zombies?”
Pale Horse, Pale Rider was written by 1918–19 flu pandemic survivor Katherine Anne Porter. A bittersweet romance that will make you cry, this short novel revolves around a doomed love set amidst WWI and the outbreak of the Spanish flu.
The Dog Stars is set 10 years after a flu epidemic has decimated most of the American population. Hig, his dog Jasper, and a sardonic old man with a stock-pile of weapons live in an abandoned airport. The trio spend their days barricading themselves against violent bandits (who, for some unfathomable reason, wear necklaces made out of vaginas???). When Hig receives an unexpected transmission through the radio of his plane, it sparks hope in him that there is still civilization outside of their compound.
A body horror coming-of-age novel, Wilder Girls is set at an all-girls boarding school on an isolated island that is under quarantine. A year and a half ago, a disease called “The Tox” spread through the school; those who survived grew second spines or scales on their skin or turned luminescence. Not even the wildlife is immune from the epidemic as the animals mutate and stalk the school’s gates. One by one, the girls disappear and it’s up to their friends to find out what has happened to them.
The Last Town on Earth is about a small mill town, Commonwealth, in the Pacific Northwest who have voted to quarantine themselves against the Spanish flu. No one in and no one out. Philip Worthy assigned to guard the one road that leads in and out of the town when he has to decide whether to allow a weary refuge-seeking soldier into Commonwealth.
We all know that Mary Shelley pioneered the science-fiction genre, but did you know that she also invented the apocalypse novel? Published in 1826, The Last Man is set in 2100 England where a plague has left only one man alive, Lionel Verney.
Some writers thrive at conferences and colonies where there are communal meals, informal after-dinner salons, and opportunities to network and perhaps even fall for a soulmate. But, if you’re someone for whom a residency is to eliminate as many distractions as possible, including the temptation to be a social butterfly, and thus get as much work done in the precious hours stolen away from everyday life, you may be called to a more hermit-like retreat. Here’s a list of some opportunities to hunker down solo, from urban islands to the most remote escapes.
This residency is located in the heart of Orlando, where the selected writer resides alone for three months in the bungalow where Jack Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums and was living when On the Road was published to critical acclaim. Social obligations are minimal; the writer participates in a Welcome Potluck at the start of the residency and a Farewell Reading at the end, with further opportunities for community outreach on a volunteer basis. As resident, you’ll have plenty of alone time to write on the porch or explore the streets and cafes of College Park, the sleepy neighborhood where the bungalow is tucked away. At the same time, the writer-in-residence can take advantage of exploring all that the fast-growing cosmopolitan center of Orlando has to offer—from craft breweries and foodie spots, to reading series and world-class music acts—if one so desires.
Similar to The Kerouac Project although more under-the-radar, this solo residency also takes place in a historic 1920’s bungalow. But what makes this stay in Wolff Cottage unique is its location in Fairhope, a small town on Mobile Bay that began in the 19th century as a utopian experiment and single-tax community that has drawn artists and out-of-the-box thinkers ever since. The cottage is located right beside the library, an airy, state-of-the-art facility, and one block away from charming Main Street. As writer-in-residence, you can walk to restaurants, a pharmacy and grocery, to Page and Palette, the well-known independent bookstore and coffee shop, and down to the Fairhope Pier at sunset. Other than an author reception, you’ll be blissfully left alone for the month to write your heart out.
In the rolling hills of north-central Pennsylvania you’ll find a serene oasis in this residency, where you have no obligations for public receptions or outreach and can deeply immerse yourself in your project. Residencies take place in either a farmhouse or country church, with a maximum of four or five residents at the house and two at the church. During my stay two summers ago, I was given the good fortune of five weeks at the church, with three of those weeks to myself and two shared with a poet. The rural setting is tranquil but not remote wilderness, with access to amenities about fifteen to thirty minutes away, and several state parks nearby that boast hikes to some of the most gorgeous waterfalls on the East Coast.
For writers with an environmentally themed project, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the Oregon coast outside Lincoln City offers hermitage-like accommodations amongst breathtaking scenery. Residencies take place from October until May and include a few scheduled gatherings and outreach events with fellow artists-in-residence. However, for the vast amount of time, you’re on your own in a cozy, comfortable cabin where you live and work, surrounded by enormous Sitka spruce and quiet. On daily walks you may encounter the elk herd that grazes near campus, and the hike to Cascade Head offers spectacular vistas of the estuary and crashing surf. This residency belongs on any writer’s “dream list.”
This IS a photo of Alaskan wilderness but not where you’ll be staying. (Photo by Joris Beugels)
Sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service & the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, this summer residency sends grantees into the Alaskan wilderness, paired with a park ranger and/or research specialist. You may find yourself staying a remote cabin or camping, kayaking, collecting samples, and helping with educational outreach. So although this residency may not entirely be for curmudgeons, the remote locations offered throughout Alaska (often in grizzly bear country), and requirements for physical condition and training (including aviation and boat safety, use of radio and satellite phones, experience and ability to camp, kayak, and otherwise keep up with a ranger) make this a wilderness residency not for the faint of heart. The intent is to provide participants with an inspired, extraordinary wilderness experience, which he or she will then write about after the residency and donate a piece back to the park service.
This is a unique opportunity for artist couples who embrace rugged adventure—to spend one month at the longtime research facility and lighthouse of Loggerhead Key, in the remote Dry Tortugas National Park near Key West. A $2000 stipend is provided, the couple must bring all food and supplies with them for the entire month and have insurance. A satellite phone is recommended. For those who are highly self-sufficient and up for an entirely “off-grid” experience of briefly dropping out of civilization, and plunging deeply into a largely untouched island wilderness, this residency may be for you—and with your partner, sure to make the memories of a lifetime.
Although the MacDowell Colony hosts a cohort of talented fellows across disciplines who come together in the evenings for group dinners and gatherings, this esteemed colony may offer the best of both worlds—and moreover, a great deal of seclusion for hunkering down and making strides on a manuscript. If you’re among the lucky few selected from its extremely competitive applicant pool, you’ll be given one of thirty-two cabins nestled upon the wooded New Hampshire acreage. Staff will deliver lunch to your cabin’s doorstep, thus not interrupting the flow of your artistic process. When at last you’re restless for a break, downtown Peterborough is just a few minutes away and a picturesque respite. The inspiration for the famous play “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder, Peterborough still beckons with pubs and restaurants, its warm and well-stocked indie bookstore, the Toadstool Bookshop, and delicious organic sandwiches and soups at Nature’s Green Grocer Market and Café.
There are a few writers who we trust as the de facto town criers of literary twitter—they always seem to have their finger on the pulse of the community, and you can trust them to have a level headed opinion on any news item, literary or otherwise.
I think we can all definitely agree that Amber Sparks is one of those writers. And now, we’re lucky enough to have a new collection of fiction from her that serves a similar purpose—And I Do Not Forgive You understands and extrapolates on the tenor of our current moment through stories that relate how women experience anger and revenge.
Sparks birthed this collection through the anger of the #MeToo movement and the supreme court hearings of two years ago, but the stories resound just as much today as they did when she first wrote them, because the patriarchy still exists and women are still fighting within it every day.
I talked to Amber Sparks about the bloody history of fairy tales, the fantasy of revenge, and the catharsis of writing about anger.
Rebecca Schuh: You can really feel the anger at the heart of the book, at the world and the patriarchy, and we are in this exact moment with the presidential primaries fueling so much of that every day. I wanted to ask how you’re feeling with the primaries, with your work, with your feminism. How that’s relating to your day-to-day feelings?
Amber Sparks: There’s so many feelings right now. One of the things I was trying to do with the book was a sense of catharsis. That’s the point of the revenge, right, is to come to some sort of catharsis and some sort of conclusion that would be cleansing. With the book, I get to have that weird great feeling of conclusion, this sense of revenge that I can have that I don’t actually get to have in real life.
In some ways, it’s kind of fun talking about it right now because it’s almost like a little fantasy that you can escape into. It’s an interesting reminder because when I first talked to Liveright and my editor about the book two years ago, I said: “I do hope that #MeToo and the women’s anger is still part of the conversation in a few years.” And of course, I had no idea that this is where we’d be and it would be a more relevant book than ever.
RS: I’m interested in what you said about catharsis. It’s a metaphorical word but it’s also a very physical word. Did you feel that you got physical relief when you were writing the stories?
AS: Yes, oh yes. That’s why I actually started writing this book. I’m working on a novel, but I felt so angry and so blocked and so frustrated that I felt like I had to do something. And Lord knows the only actual skill set that I have is writing. I was like okay, I’m just going to write. I called them my revenges. I said I’m going to write some little revenges for myself to make myself feel better. It definitely felt physically better as well as emotionally better. I would write these things and I would feel like oh, okay, now I can work on something else. I can get rid of those feelings for a few minutes. I never thought about even putting it into a book until I started talking to other women who were like “why don’t you make that a book? I would read that, I would love to have that sense of catharsis.”
RS: The first story in the collection involves this very traumatic friend breakup. When I read it and reread it, I couldn’t find evidence as to what caused the friend to ghost her best friend, leaving the reader as much in the dark as the ghosted friend. Was that an intentional move for you? Making the mystery not solvable?
I want to give women the idea of the ability to exist for the sake of herself.
AS: Yeah, absolutely. I wrote that after reading an advice column where somebody wrote in about being ghosted by a friend and didn’t know why. I thought “my god, that is just horrible. I couldn’t think of anything more horrible.” You really don’t have any sort of recourse, the kind of recourse that you would have if it were a family member or lover. I started thinking about that and wrote the piece. And it was funny because after I wrote it, I had so many people write to me or message me and were like the same thing happened to me. It’s just such an ultimate horror and such a particular horror for our modern society to think about, being ditched and you have no idea why and no real way to find out.
RS: Thinking about what you said comparing it to a romantic ghosting because even if you’re banging on your ex-lover’s door, and you’re acting like oh my god I just need to know, people will call you crazy but they also will kind of get why you’re doing it. It’s happened, that’s common, that’s how exes are.
AS: People might call you crazy, but they get it. If you went and banged on your best friend’s door, people would definitely think you were out of your mind and would call the police on you.
RS: The other thing that’s so disturbing with friendship is obviously we all want our relationships and marriages to be completely open, we know what our partner is thinking, but it’s very common that people have a secret that leads to something bad. You’d think those are the things you’d tell your best friend about.
AS: Exactly. The people in the story, they share everything, they know everything about each other. The larger thing that I was trying to get at is our alienation in our current society. The way that people who live in the city live so weirdly apart sometimes.
RS: And the acceptance of alienation. To know how common, it’s a part of modern life. The next thing I wanted to talk about is the story “A Place for Hiding Precious Things,”where the young woman has to escape her father’s incestuous desire after the death of her mother by hiding in a donkey skin. Where did that story originate?
AS: It actually comes from a fairy tale called “Donkey Skin.” It’s a very loose retelling of that fairy tale. The protagonist is a young princess whose mother dies and her father, the king, decides he has to have the next best thing, the next most beautiful woman in the world, who happens to look just like her mother did. And so she has to escape with the help of her fairy godmother. In that fairy tale, she finds a handsome prince, and of course, they get married and live happily ever after. And there is a cake and a ring and some other elements of it that I kind of threw in.
It’s one of my favorite fairy tales, and because it’s just so off the wall, it’s really wild and weird. The way that she disguises herself when she runs away is she kills a donkey, her father’s favorite donkey, and wraps herself in the bloody donkey skin. I’d always wanted to write this because it’s such a feral fairy tale, but every time I tried to write it, I kind of got stuck at the part with the prince. And then after a while, I figured out that I don’t think the happy ending for this girl is ending up with the person. It’s such a feral story, it deserves a more feral ending. She can transform herself in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with running from one man to another.
RS: I love that aspect of it. She experienced the men and then…
AS: She tried it out and it didn’t work out so she’s living in the forest now.
RS: I’ve read several books in the last few years that are taking on the retold fairy tale, I love watching that develop as a modern genre. When did you start working within that? Are there other writers you took inspiration from?
AS: Angela Carter, Helen Oyeyemi, and Kelly Link have been doing it for a while. I definitely took inspiration from folks like that. Matt Bell has rewritten a lot of fairy tales. It’s something that I think kind of started with the modern feminist movement. There was a story that came out about how fairy tales are actually much older than we thought that they were. The sort of men that we think of collecting these tales and being the first, the Brothers Grimm and stuff, they were actually much older than that. Thousands of years ago, as opposed to hundreds. There’s sort of this interest and a resurgence in going back and subverting some of these traditional stories, and digging into the older origins. A lot of versions of these stories that we have are sanitized. If you actually go back and look at some of the more original stories, they were really fucked up. Cruel, violent, a lot of them were really bent on revenge and retribution in crazy ways. It’s fun to go back and find the…I don’t think you can really call them feminism, but you can find the service to women in those particular stories.
RS: It’s interesting, I hadn’t heard of that particular story, but when I was a kid, my sister and I, we really loved gory stuff. And there were two or three fairy tales we were obsessed with, and one of them was the girl with the red shoes who has to dance forever or get her feet cut off, and the other one was the little match girl where she ends up simply dying in the street.
In traditional stories, your protagonist is going to end up with a romantic partner but that’s not the only way to be happy.
AS: I had this book of Hans Christian Anderson stories that was at my school library when I was in elementary school, and I used to go and check it out over and over again just to read those stories. I was obsessed with them, and my mom was like they’re so weird. He kept that weird violent stuff that got sanitized out of a lot of the other versions. He kept those in there. That totally appeals to kids, kids working out their fears and trauma through horror. Find the worst thing and then okay, you can feel better, you’ve faced that demon.
RS: Speaking of worst things, you had this dichotomy of “the release of loneliness being the best thing for a character and possession being the worst” I found that so interesting, because usually loneliness is what people are afraid of, and possession is the desire.
AS: I’m obsessed with the idea of loneliness not being a bad thing. And people will be like oh, being alone, and I’m like no, specifically loneliness, the emotions that are attached to it—that they might feel alone and feel your aloneness and embrace that.
In traditional stories and traditional romance, your protagonist is going to end up with a man. Or if you’re reading particularly enlightened romance, with a woman. Either way, they’re going to end up with somebody, a romantic partner, but that’s not necessarily the only way to be happy. A huge growing number of women are single, want to stay single, and have no interest in having a long time romantic partner. I think it’s great, that there’s a freedom in that. That maybe we can’t entirely experience unless we are alone. Especially for fairy tale heroines and the kinds of people who are constantly being sought after by men for their own various reasons. I want to give women the idea of the ability to exist for the sake of herself.
Update: Due to the pandemic, all Electric Literature staff are currently working remotely, so all internships are very likely to start remotely as well. Since we don’t know how long this will last, we are for the first time considering remote applicants for one of the two open intern positions. (Successful applicants who live in New York will be expected to come into the office once the office reopens, and remote interns who can get to New York are encouraged to do so, once doing so is understood to be safe.)
Electric Literature internships introduce undergraduate and graduate students, emerging writers, and aspiring publishing professionals to digital publishing and the New York literary scene. Because we are a small, not-for-profit publisher, we provide unique opportunities for professional development and resume-building.
As an Electric Literature intern, you are encouraged to become involved in any aspect of our work that interests you. You’ll sort mail and go to the post office, but you’ll also have the opportunity to contribute to editorial decisions, write for the site, and attend cool literary events. Our interns have gone on to work for places like Publishers Weekly, Oxford University Press, Penguin Random House, and… Electric Literature.
Responsibilities
● Comb the web and social media for breaking literary news ● Write book lists and news items for electricliterature.com ● Staff events ● Select images to pair with articles ● Format, copy edit, and draft articles ● Update contact databases ● Fulfill online merchandise sales ● Transcribe interviews ● Perform other administrative tasks ● Open mail and catalogue books
Skills
● Personal experience using WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—professional experience is a plus ● Excellent writing skills and a unique point of view ● Basic understanding of Photoshop and inDesign ● Firm grasp of grammar and spelling ● Organized and fastidious
The ideal candidate
● Has an educational background in journalism, literature, or creative writing ● Has prior internship or entry-level job experience at another publishing, media, or non-profit organization ● Participates in the contemporary literary scene ● Regularly reads literary magazines and literary websites (including but not limited to Recommended Reading, The Commuter, and electricliterature.com) ● Believes strongly in the Electric Literature mission to make literature more relevant, exciting, and inclusive ● Is hard-working, pays great attention to detail, and can work independently ● Writes clearly and with personality ● Has an eye for design and knows what images will grab a reader’s attention
Details
This is a part-time internship (10–20 hours/week) with a $200 per month stipend to cover transportation and meals. Candidates must be able to come to our office in downtown Brooklyn at least two days a week. We are happy to work with universities and graduate programs to provide course credit, though you do not need to be a student to apply. Interns will start ASAP and work the summer, though exact dates have some flexibility and there may be an opportunity to extend.
How to apply
Please submit the following through Submittable by 11:59 pm on March 23 April 6:
A cover letter and resume
The headline and 2–3 paragraph introduction for a reading list (you can look at the lists section on our site for inspiration). Include 5–7 book titles that you would include on the list, and a short capsule description of one of those books.
My novel The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is a story of how a young woman’s unexplained suicide shapes and transforms the lives of those she left behind. It’s a literary mystery with elements of magical realism set in Japan, not unlike my debut novel Rainbirds. Because of these, I am often asked, “As an Indonesian-born Singaporean, why do write a novel set in Japan with Japanese characters?”
The short answer would be because I want to write the kinds of novels I enjoy reading most. I love Japanese novels, especially literary and crime fiction. And this is the slightly longer version:
I was a Gen Y kid, growing up when anime, manga, and Japanese pop culture started to gain popularity. I spent my free time watching Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon on the local TV station, borrowing Aoyama Gosho’s Detective Conan comic series from my friends, and listening to Utada Hikaru’s First Love and L’Arc~en~Ciel’s The Fourth Avenue Café. Soon after, I got my first taste of Japanese contemporary literary fiction—Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. I was hooked, and I began to look for similar reads.
Over the years, I discovered a number of talented Japanese women writers. In this list, I introduce some of my favorites, with the hope that you’ll enjoy them too. I also include the names of the translators to acknowledge their importance in bringing these wonderful books to a wider audience.
Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Megan Backus
Kitchen introduces us to Mikage Sakurai, a young orphan who recently lost her grandmother. Her friend, Yoichi, and his mother—who was once his father—decide to take her in. It’s a warm and tender story about family, love, and tragedy.
Banana Yoshimoto is the pen name of Japanese writer Mahoko Yoshimoto, the daughter of the famous Japanese poet Takaaki Yoshimoto. Yoshimoto’s quirky and captivating stories mainly deal with the exhaustion of young Japanese people and how experiences shape a person’s life. Read a short story about love after the sex party circuit by Banana Yoshimoto here.
In I Want To Kick You in The Back, a first-year high school student named Hatsu has trouble fitting in with her classmates. She gets to know Ninagawa, a loner in her class who is obsessed with an idol and has no interest in actual girls. Gradually, Hatsu develops a strong urge to. . . kick Ninagawa’s back.
Risa Wataya was a 19-year-old student at Waseda University when she won the prestigious 2003 Akutagawa Prize with this book. She became the award’s youngest-ever recipient.
Unlike most writers who tend to produce works in the same vein, each of Yoko Ogawa’s books is unique in terms of topic and tone. It’s very hard to pick a favorite, but The Professor and The Housekeeper scores high for its beautiful writing and sensitivity.
The story’s protagonists are a brilliant math professor with only 80 minutes of short-term memory, a young housekeeper who is hired to care for him, and her ten-year-old son, affectionately nicknamed “Root” by the Professor.
At 36-years-old, Keiko has worked part-time at a convenience store for 18 years and has never been in a romantic relationship. She’s an excellent worker who knows how to do her job well. But as she ages, the social pressure to get a “real” job or to settle down in a marriage is mounting.
This is another Akutagawa Award-winning novel. The writing is particularly transportive—I love the vivid description of the sounds and sights at the convenience store. Read about how a Japanese novella about a convenience store worker became an international bestseller here.
Tsukiko, a single office worker in her late 30s, chances upon her former high school teacher in a local bar. Unable to remember his name, she simply calls him “Sensei.” They continue to meet and form a bond over food and drink and a trip to the mountains. Be prepared to get hungry, mouth-watering descriptions of Japanese food are aplenty.
Fun fact: the original title of this book is The Briefcase, which might be less intriguing than the current title, but makes a lot of sense once you’ve read the book.
A housewife takes up bodybuilding, but her workaholic husband fails to notice; a newlywed woman notices her spouse’s features are beginning to match her own; a saleswoman waits on a customer who won’t come out of the fitting room. This is a delightful collection of eleven whimsical short stories, all of them peppered with magical realism elements. Read the titular story from The Lonesome Bodybuilderhere.
Snakes and Earrings follows Lui, a young woman in Tokyo, and her new boyfriend, Ama, who has a split tongue. Her deep fascination with body modification and sadomasochistic sexual activities drives her to increasingly dangerous choices, including a violent relationship with bisexual body modification and tattoo artist named Shiba.
In 2003, Hitomi Kanehara’s Snakes and Earrings jointly won Akutagawa Award together with Risa Wataya’s I Want to Kick You in The Back. Kanehara’s works often deal with young, rebellious women outside the mainstream Japanese society and are written in a language style that reflects vernacular Japanese.
Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
A boy obsesses over a woman who sells sandwiches in a supermarket. He goes there almost every day, just to see her face. This novella about first love is quirky and refreshing, and there is a certain musicality in the narrative. Kawakami is a singer, so perhaps that influences her writing style. Read a short story, “A Once Perfect Day for Bananafish,” by Mieko Kawakami here.
Unconditional love often comes with a side effect of incessant fear. What happens if the object of affection is hurt? How can you cope with losing someone who was once your whole life? A parent or guardian’s unconditional love for a child goes even further. The fear is even deeper, denser. Almost flammable.
Kevin Wilson depicts this fear in an alarmingly unique way in his novel Nothing to See Here, through characters who spontaneously combust and come out the other side unscathed. It’s one thing to worry about the natural disasters that could befall a toddler, but the parents and caretakers in this story have to deal with the seemingly supernatural as well. Wilson writes a world populated by dynamic characters and paranormal events, begging questions about how far they will go to protect their loved ones.
I spoke with Kevin Wilson about the vulnerability of parenting, his childhood obsession, and figuring out how to take care of each other when we’re all so damaged.
Frances Yackel: Where did the idea for spontaneously combusting children come from?
Kevin Wilson: It came from the same place that most of my writing comes from, which is childhood obsession. I was maybe ten when I first heard about spontaneous human combustion and it became this immediate and powerful obsession, something that I couldn’t get rid of. And so I had this recurring image in my head of people bursting into flames.
I was ten when I heard about spontaneous human combustion and it became this immediate and powerful obsession.
And this is actually the third time I’ve published a book that has spontaneous human combustion in it, so obviously I’m still processing it. For so much of my life, it was inward, thinking about myself blowing up, worrying about that possibility or kind of wanting it to happen just to relieve the anxiety that filled me up.
But once I had kids, and became responsible for them, and felt that love for them while also realizing how difficult it was to take care of them, that obsession kind of naturally shifted to them, imagining what it would be like to take care of someone who might burst into flames. I think that’s been a big shift in my work, moving from looking at the world through the perspective of a kid, the freshness of each experience, and now trying to look at the world from the perspective of an adult, realizing how different it is, how every action is tinged with a kind of nostalgia that connects you to the person you used to be.
FY: The doctor in the novel takes some guesses at certain diseases or reasons that a person might spontaneously combust, was there a research process to this? If so, what were some of the things you found?
KW: I don’t think it’s laziness, though it might very well be, but I try to do as little research as possible if it ultimately doesn’t matter. The doctor in the novel is touched by a kind of mania, so I tried to imagine not what might be scientifically possible, but what a crazy person would think. The holy spirit, a divine possession, something like that made sense to me. In the books I read as a kid, the explanations were kind of boring, a cigarette flame burning the fats in someone’s body if they were passed out. Or internal organs rubbing together to produce a flame.
FY: Lillian fascinates me. She’s direct and unapologetic and knows how to tick people off when she wants to, but she’s so tender toward the people that she empathizes with. She’s biting but she loves deeply. Could you talk about the development of this character, how did you get in her head?
KW: A former student recently told me that she read the novel and imagined Lillian as me in a wig. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do think the way my brain works, my internal monologue, is pretty similar to Lillian. But I had to move beyond myself to imagine her as a separate character and I think that you touch on something about her that interested and surprised me, which is her innate ability to know how to tick people off. And that she kind of likes fucking with people who irritate her, which is not me at all. I tend to hate someone in my mind with an intensity that might psychically damage them, but I can’t confront people. I honestly was thinking about Merricat Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and Ramona Quimby, who was my favorite character as a kid. But unlike Merricat, I didn’t want her to be a psychopath. I wanted that biting nature to be wrapped up with her ability to empathize and love, though it might be an odd way of doing it.
FY: As for the children; all three of them jump off the page. They are each so alive and unique. Does having children of your own influence your characters or the narrative?
KW: Oh, for sure. Not just my own kids, but observing their friends, watching all their strange little personalities, how wonderful they are. They have such odd mannerisms and it’s all kind of alive and shifting because they don’t really know yet how to control or hide anything. In creating the novel, I didn’t want to put too much weight on the kids. I didn’t want them to be oracles or adults in kids’ bodies. I wanted them to be what they are, children, in all the weird ways that childhood functions. And that’s what’s lovely about children, that moment when they gain clarity and see something, the way the world opens up. I love watching that with my kids.
FY: Lillian is seemingly always looking for what it means to really care for another human being. In almost every chapter, she has a different answer to the question. As a social animal, humans are brought up against this question every day. We need to look out for one another in order to coexist safely. In what ways do you think the addition of a scientific anomaly, such as spontaneously combusting children, change the way we might look at that question?
I’m trying to figure out how we take care of each other when we’re all so damaged in different ways.
KW: I don’t want to be overtly symbolic or anything. To my mind, the book is about taking care of fire children. I want that. But at the heart of it, I’m trying to figure out how we take care of each other when we’re all so damaged in different ways. The fire children are a kind of huge, visible issue that might relate to disability, and I’m trying to figure that out. I believe that we have to take care of each other. That’s the only thing that matters in the world, to help everyone get safely to whatever comes after this life. And that kind of altruism sounds so nice in theory, but people are weird and it’s not that easy all the time. How do we protect ourselves and other vulnerable people when it isn’t easy? How do we respect every person and take their unique elements into consideration? And as Lillian tries to figure it out, I’m trying to do the same thing. And I’m not there yet, but I’m trying.
FY: The reality of children setting themselves on fire (and coming out unscathed) is maybe difficult to fathom happening in this world. But the side effects are certainly tangible. The children get upset, or angry, or stressed, and the adults around them become stunned, or hysterical. But some adults, Lillian in particular, stay calm and can help others calm down. This story has made me think about how I react to other people’s emotions—children as well as adults. Because emotions are so difficult to convey, it can sometimes be difficult to know how to respond in a respectful and safe way. Could you talk about this theme in your novel? How does the spontaneous combustion bring out the best, or worst, in us?
KW: I think Jasper and Madison, in some ways, because they have come from privilege, are stunned by the need and vulnerability of these children. And I think about this a lot, how sometimes people with the most power, with the most ability to affect change in the world, seem repulsed by vulnerability, that simply engaging with it might rub off on them and they’ll lose that power. They’d rather put up a huge wall between themselves and that need. But I think Lillian, because of her own history, has a better sense of how to deal with the children, to actually treat them as human beings. And to do that, I think you have to make yourself vulnerable, to be willing to accept the pain that comes with being vulnerable, in order to help someone else.
And that’s really fucking hard for me to do, because my own brain is so overwhelmed most of the time, because I live in a state of anxiety, but it’s what I focus most of my energy on, especially with my kids and my students and the people in my life that I love. I try to allow myself to be vulnerable in ways that lets me connect and try to move forward together with that person. So we’re each helping the other one get somewhere better than when we started. I think that’s what Lillian and Bessie and Roland are doing for each other.
In Brandon Taylor’sdebut Real Life, Wallace, a black, queer Alabama-born doctoral student contends with the virtual all-whiteness of a Midwestern campus—and how it infects his personal and private life.
Taylor wrote the novel in an incredible five weeks (!) during his own science doctoral program before switching tracks to pursue an MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop. The book, which times feels pointed though placid with its observations through the introverted Wallace and at others, absolutely violent and devastating, has been greeted with near-universal praise from the literary establishment.
The novel dissects Wallace’s otherness through his friends, colleagues, and love interest. The interactions stew with awkward misfires, microaggressions, and downright racism—all of which offers a sort of sociology of campus otherness set against the backdrop of Midwestern niceness.
I spoke to Brandon Taylor, who is a senior editor for Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, about learning to fight with oneself on the page and the most gratifying response to his debut.
J.R. Ramakrishnan: You captured the feeling of being the only person of color in academia so acutely. You and Wallace share a lot in common. How much of the novel is lifted from your real life?
All of the really awful things that the white people say [in my novel] are actual things that were said to me while I was a doctoral student.
Brandon Taylor: I took situations that happened but the ways they unfold in the novel are quite different from how they unfolded in my actual life. The reason for that is that Wallace and I are very different. Once you move something into fiction, it belongs exclusively to the realm of fiction. But I did make up my mind to use the raw transcript of the racial accosts that I experienced while I was in my Ph.D. program in Madison, Wisconsin. All of the really awful things that the white people say to Wallace are actual things that were said to me while I was a doctoral student. I didn’t trust myself not to want to tamp it down because of discomfort. If I used what was actually said, then I didn’t have to worry about trying to make it more palatable. The reader will have to sit with that, the same way I had to sit with it and the same way that Wallace has to sit with it in the novel.
JRR: I thought you wrote the hell out of Chapter 5 where you give us Wallace’s horrifying backstory (but so beautifully rendered and such a shock after the tense but calmer early chapters)? It cleaves the novel and the reader. I understand from your essays that some of this is also drawn from your personal history. Could you talk about writing that chapter?
BT: I wrote this novel in five weeks, but two of those weeks was about not being able to write that part. When I set up the novel, I knew that the middle would contain all of the mess and difficulty of Wallace’s past. I knew the other parts couldn’t contain this. I wanted to seal it all in the middle of the book and it would exist in this totally different register to everything else in the novel. I knew that was what I needed to do. So when I sat down to write, I wondered, how do I write this? How do I get my way into this? If I can’t finish this section, and the whole book is a wash.
It was so incredibly difficult. I just didn’t know how to access the language I needed because it’s a moment in which Wallace is having to make a disclosure about all of the things that have happened to him and all the reasons why he hasn’t been able to face it. And all the reasons why he is the way he is. I didn’t have the language for that because it’s the most interior part of the novel. All artifice has been dropped and it’s just a moment of raw emotion. But at the same time, it’s a novel so it has to make sense. And it was just incredibly, incredibly difficult.
But, one night I was coming home and there was this crack of thunder in the sky. That’s when the first line of that section came to me. I went home and I wrote it in 40 minutes and then it was over. I then felt very sick because it was just so much. Once you make such a disclosure, what do you do? How do you pick up the pieces when someone has told you, all of this awful stuff? It was a bit difficult to start the novel up again because it’s a huge molten core of energy.
BT: In my doctoral program, my thesis advisor was so tough on my writing in a way that my English teachers had never been in school. She was always saying things such as, this has to be more rigorous. This needs to be more thoughtful. This needs to be more skeptical.
If you look at contemporary publishing, you would think that there are no black, brown or queer people anywhere, in any field.
She was teaching me how to write about ideas and how to push my writing. I got a comprehensive education of how to think and write critically, how to reason through complicated ideas, and how to pitch them together into a larger narrative in science. It taught me a lot about inquiry, curiosity and how to manage a large unwieldy intellectual project like a novel or a short story.
My education in writing is one that is deeply rooted in the tradition of treating the ideas I hold most dear with absolute ruthless skepticism and doubt. I pursue ideas through this intense line of inquiry where I always second guess, double-check, and second guess again until what emerges is a solidly argued, reasoned piece of thought on the page.
When I left my Ph.D. program to come to the Iowa Writers Workshop, there was very little actual writing instruction or people teaching me how to think on the page or write rigorously. And that was a source of great disappointment and in some ways, a lot of suffering.
JRR: You are guest hosting EL’s advice column, Blunt Instrument, soon. What’s the best writing/literary advice you’ve been given?
BT: Justin Torres told me that I had a tendency to punish my characters and to take sides. He said, even if you, as the writer hate the character, the character still deserves a moment of grace in which they’re allowed to be dignified. Instead of pushing my characters to behave in ways that were convenient for me, it was about allowing each character to be real, complicated, and human. That was one of the most important things for this novel—making sure that the characters were allowed to be full and messy.
JRR: Before you wrote this novel, did you read or have any affinity for novels about science or scientists. If so, can you recommend your favorites?
BT: I haven’t read a lot of novels about science because as a scientist reading novels about science, I’m always thinking, well that’s not how it is. That’s not right. Or the science would bother me. It’s funny because when I was in my science program, other scientists would constantly critique with depictions of science in the media, be it books or movies or TV shows or podcasts. The pedantry was out of control. I didn’t read any science-y books in the run-up to this novel. The novel is more directly inspired by campus novels that I have read. I see it fitting into a tradition of this contemporary moment of novels of anxiety and novels of consciousness. That to me is really the mode in which it is operating. So I don’t have any recs on this.
JRR: What are your favorite novels of queer life and/or coming of age?
BT: The novel that made me want to write is André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name. I read it when I was 18 years old and it just totally rearranged the world for me. Before that, I had never read a single book about a queer person or queer life. For most of my life before that point, I went around thinking that no one else felt the way that I felt, that no one else felt weird, precocious, alone, and without a sense of self. That book was when I detected the consciousness of a queer person. The novel is integral to my artistry but also to my sense of myself as a queer person.
Edinburgh is one of my favorite books. It’s so beautiful and wise. Garth Greenwell. His What Belongs to You and Cleanness are both superb. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply important to me as a writer and reader. I just love that book to death. Justin Torres’ We the Animals is so lyrical, and yet so earthy, concrete, and deeply imagined. It’s an exquisite book.
JRR: What has been the most gratifying response to your book thus far?
BT: One of my big fears was that I had written a novel that would make white people feel just uncomfortable enough that they could be say, “Oh yes, I have eaten my moral vegetables for the day,” but that other queer people of color might say that I’d written a book that that glorified whiteness. I was just so afraid that I had written a morally unsophisticated novel. To me, the most gratifying responses has come from other queer people of color who see this book as being complicated, nuanced, and rigorous, but above all else, truthful about a kind of experience that I think doesn’t get talked about enough.
If you look at contemporary publishing, you would think that there are no black, brown or queer people anywhere, in any field. What this book is showing and what the response is showing that we’re here, we’ve always been here, and finally, we’re maybe being heard a little more.
The horror genre and its close kin are well-suited to class-conscious critique. Alien’s working-class protagonists are killed by Xenomorphs, sure, but their deaths are written off as the price of doing business by a greedy corporation. Cabin In the Woods turns slasher tropes into corporate drudgery. Get Out is a blistering critique of the commodification of Black identity and bodies by rich white people.
As a kid, horror was the first genre I truly loved, and the one that I always turned to when I couldn’t make sense of the world. Which was frequently; the happy, wholesome middle-class existence normalized on television was a rarity in my working-class town. Families like mine–parents with multiple jobs, struggling with addiction or anger or bankruptcy–were relegated to Very Special Episodes, one-off moralizing cautionary tales.
We seemed to proliferate in the horror genre, though, and maybe that’s why my adolescent comfort reading was just as likely to give me nightmares. My bookshelves were heavy with RL Stine, Lois Duncan, and Robert Cormier, which transitioned easily into Stephen King and Poppy Z. Brite in my teens.
As an adult, I keep returning to horror, the strange, and the surreal for the same reasons. My novella Finna features two queer ex-lovers at a big-box homegoods store, where the horrors are rooted in their employer’s ruthless capitalistic mindset as much as carnivorous furniture or murderous sales associates. For me, living and working late-stage capitalism often feels like being stuck in the plot of a surreal, slowburn apocalypse, where the third-act plot twists just keep coming.
Here are a few of my favorite stories that tackle class and late-stage capitalism, and its intersections with race, power, and violence.
Burke is one of the most criminally underrated horror writers in the genre. Her 2011 short story collection shows off her daring and her skill in writing the intersecting horrors of racism, sexism, and poverty. The book opens with “Walter and the Three-Legged King,” which forces its protagonist to make a choice: endure the indignities and pains of poverty, or compromise his Black identity. Either way, he’s trapped in a racist system. Other favorites include “I Make People Do Bad Things,” about a Harlem madame-turned-numbers-queen whose secret weapon cuts both ways, and “CUE: Change,” which turns the zombie apocalypse story on its head.
Broke, desperate for money, and even more desperate to prove herself, Gyre gets a job mapping the interior of a cave system. Her only lifeline to the surface world is Em, her handler. Em isn’t exactly reliable; she drugs Gyre, cuts off communication, and knows a lot more than she’s telling. Em knows Gyre lied about her qualifications, and isn’t afraid to use that knowledge against her. Em’s secrets, however, aren’t the whole of Gyre’s troubles. She’s not alone down in the caves; everyone who died exploring it is here as well. Starling has written a tight, tense, and claustrophobic sci-fi thriller, with notes of body horror and a number of unexpected twists.
Stephen King remains one of my problematic faves among horror writers with working-class backgrounds. In On Writing, King wrote extensively about his hardscrabble upbringing in Maine, with a single mother who worked long hours to support her sons. Before selling his first novel, King took shifts at a local industrial laundry to supplement his meager income as an English teacher and short story writer. Some of those experiences—as well as his familiarity with rural New England class politics—are on display in his first short collection, and make up for some of the more tired or trope-y stories in the volume. “The Mangler” and “Graveyard Shift” in particular demonstrate his distaste for casually cruel bosses or the nightmarish danger of industrial accidents.
The second book in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy sees the weirdness of Area X permeate the facility tasked with controlling it. Authority mixes mundane office drama with spy-vs-spy paranoia and VanderMeer’s particular brand of the Weird. The novel thrums with a strain of dark humor and the surreal, familiar to anyone who’s been trapped in a job with a dysfunctional organization. For a shorter and stranger take on surreal office horror, read “The Situation” in his collection The Third Bear, or a comic adaptation of it at Tor.com.
Tidbeck’s 2015 short story takes the idea of ghostwriting to its properly spooky conclusion: the narrator, an impoverished writer trying to break into publishing, is referred to a ghostwriting gig by a friend. She finds out that the gig isn’t, as she thought, editing notes left by deceased authors, but taking actual diction from their reanimated corpses. When the friend who referred her dies via a falling piano and is resurrected, the narrator is tasked with transcribing her postmortem rambles. The story is full of these kinds of tender ironies, told with a deadpan tone that disguises real concerns about intellectual property, profiteering off creative labor, and the afterlife of art. Tidbeck’s novel Amatka also tackles the futility and ennui of living in self-devouring economic systems.
Stephen Graham Jones is a prolific horror writer, he’s churned out several books and novels, in addition to critical work about the horror genre. As such, he gets easily into the heart of what ghosts are: outsiders, creatures of the margins and fringes, finding hidden ways into the places we thought were safe. The novel’s young protagonist encounters a vision of his father’s fancy dance regalia, despite having died on the reservation nearly a decade earlier. Mapping the Interior’s characters are forced to make terrible choices when faced with the colliding extremes of poverty, necessity, pride, and power.
Whiteness, wealth and the systems upholding them are on par with monsters from the outer planes in LaValle’s slim novella, a retelling of HP Lovecraft’s virulently racist “The Horror at Redhook.” Lovecraft’s story used New York City’s Black and immigrant populations and the slums that they were confined to as a backdrop for a monster-worshipping cult. LaValle’s protagonist, a mediocre bluesman mourning a father murdered by the police, flips the script. The chilling indifference of the Great Old Ones—a source of terror in cosmic horror—seems like a kindness compared to the hatred of the white and the wealthy.
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