This story by Bienvenido Santos is about an aging Filipino expatriate who feels cut off from his culture. After years of menial work in the United States, the protagonist has no remaining family and only one local, possibly terminally ill, Filipino friend. Rather naïvely, he decides to approach and offer to host to a group of visiting tinikling dancers. He is ignored, but makes an audio recording of their performance to remember them by. In the depressing denouement, he faces the grim reality of losing them all. Themes include nostalgia, connection with one’s roots, aging and death. More…
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A Good Man is Hard to Find
Flannery O’Connor is a master at coming up with stories in which almost every main character has some kind of flaw. It is hard to like any of this dysfunctional family of six (except maybe the baby) as they cruise down Highway 441. When their car overturns beside a deserted road, they attract the attention of a crazed killer who calls himself “The Misfit”. As the rest of the family are murdered around her, the grandmother tries to convince the Misfit that deep inside he is one of those hard to find men. Themes: prejudice, deception, violence, religion, “goodness”, redemption More…
The Big True
This story by Dina Nayeri explores the circumstances of a once famous Iranian sitar player who, following his wife’s death and his daughter’s graduation from Harvard, chooses the simple life of a drifter. This and his clumsiness with technology causes a rift with his condescending daughter, who can’t even make time to share a coffee when he visits New York. Fortunately, he finds solace with a like-minded Indian immigrant and other residents sharing a YMCA hostel. Themes include the immigrant experience, cultural differences, generational conflict, friendship, father-daughter relationships, search for identity, loneliness, nostalgia, the Internet. More…
Moths in the Arc Light
In this story by Sinclair Lewis, a successful 1920s businessman becomes infatuated with a secretary he sees from his twelfth story window working in an office across the street. Over time they come to exchange greetings and communicate daily through their windows. When they finally meet, she is not the simple secretary he had expected. She is as driven by corporate success as he is. He finds her a job with better prospects and is surprised when, several months later, she calls him with a request to urgently meet. Themes include infatuation, chauvinism, misogyny, gender stereotypes, ambition, loneliness, depression, sexuality. 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…