The jade bracelet in this story by Mary Frances Chong represents the strong bond between a young Malaysian girl and her dying grandmother. The girl’s mother has devoted herself to caring for her mother in her final years and, when the end is near, moves her to a Buddhist cave temple for prayers and cremation. The grandmother’s wish was for the girl to have her bracelet. Unfortunately, her mother’s insistence on following Chinese hereditary practice causes her to disrespect this wish and give it to her irresponsible brother. Themes include love, care and respect for the aged, tradition, “face”. More…
Neighbours
Set in 1970s Burma, this story by Moe Moe (aka Inya) uses the experiences of a young couple with a four-month-old child to explore the theme of “neighborliness”. Moving to the suburbs after living with family “downtown”, they find the neighbors friendly and helpful but also experience incidences of prying, malicious gossip, quarreling, greed, and pressure to keep up appearances. Moving to an apartment closer to the city, they find an individualistic environment where nobody even talks to their neighbors. This leaves the poor protagonist with no idea what sort of neighborhood she wants to live in. More…
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
In this story by Robert Olen Butler, an aging Vietnamese-American immigrant prepares for death. As he bids farewell to his family, the restless ghost of his once good friend, Ho Chi Minh, visits him over several nights, triggering memories of the past. He is proud of his daughter, who maintains Vietnamese traditions, but not so his son-in-law and grandson, who have been involved in a political murder. All he wants now is to be reunited with his wife and other dead loved-ones in the “village square”. Themes include aging and death, memories, family, friendship, tradition, politics and war. More…
Animal Stories
In this story by Jason Brown, a melancholic young man struggles to deal with his mother’s looming death from a brain tumor. Spanning a brief period from her initial diagnosis in hospital to her refusal of treatment and car ride home, the story is interspersed with memories of the past and diversions involving animal videos playing on the TV in her room. The memories have as much to do with the young man coming to terms with his failures in life as they do with his mother’s deteriorating state of mind. Themes: memories, dysfunctionality, mental instability, devotion, acceptance, nature. More…
God Sees the Truth, But Waits
This is one of Leo Tolstoy’s earlier short stories, published between his two epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and thirteen years before What Men Live By. It has themes of injustice, acceptance, forgiveness and redemption. The protagonist suffers a dramatic fall in worldly terms, which is more than matched by his growth in spiritual grace. The plot was not new. It is a re-working of an almost identical tale from War and Peace related by peasant character Platon Karataev. The novel was written for the Russian nobility; this version was targeted at its common people. More…