It's a Jumble

  I thought that I didn’t get much reading done last month, but I present to you seventeen short story recs today, and there is still more amazing fiction that I didn’t have time to list here. I know we often say this on repeat, but it’s true: we’re living in a golden age of short stories.   Khōréō Magazine Issue 1.1 Khōréō is a new quarterly magazine, dedicated to “elevating the voices of immigrant and diaspora authors.”  The editors are particularly interested in fiction that explores themes of migration, and this shows clearly in their debut issue. The stories here brim with themes of family, diaspora, generational loss and change; with belonging and reclamation and what it means to make a home. These are fresh and surprising stories, that have innovative forms and put new twists on old tropes. I wanted to share each of the stories in this issue, because they are all worth reading, and this is a magazine that is worth watching.   “The Impossible Weight of Han” by Maria Do

  I’ve finished reading Jung Chang’s  Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China , the classic memoir of one family’s experiences in China through Japanese occupation, the start of the Communist revolution, the utter madness of the Cultural Revolution, and beyond. Nearly every page provokes horror and outrage and incredulity, although there are also stories of stunning courage and human kindness. I started this book because I wanted to better understand how a nation gives into a charismatic dictator and slides into madness. I still don’t understand, no more than I understand certain events and movements of our present time.   There are so many passages that I underlined while reading this book. Passages relevant to our current time, passages depicting mass delusion and hysteria, a fevered cult of personality, zealotry, scapegoating, political cowardice, and the use of politics to grift and settle petty personal feuds.   Of the many passages I’ve underlined, I think of this one now, whi