American Short

In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman, the acclaimed author of Writing to Save a Life, blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country. Navigating an extraordinary range, Wideman challenges the boundaries of traditional forms, and delivers unforgettable, narratives that touch the core of what it means to be alive.

In this eye-opening short story, a tech reporter’s mistake unites two women eight thousand miles apart. One in New Jersey, one in the Philippines. Same name: Sandra Guzman. Same job: content moderators for a mega social media website. What transpires between them is a friendship that changes their perceptions of each other’s privilege and challenges the power of the very industry they work for.

يضم الكتاب إحدى عشرة قصة قصيرة من الأدب الأمريكي، هذا الأدب الذي بدأ بداية متواضعة، ثم ما لبث أن أخذ مركزه بين الآداب الأولى في العالم. ومن خصائصه المميزة أنه يمجد المثل العليا، وصفات الاعتماد على النفس والاستقلالية، واحترام الإنسان، والتأكيد على الديمقراطية، وحب الطبيعة والخروج عن التقاليد الأدبية من أجل كل إبداع جديد. وتُعد الفكاهة عامَّة، والفكاهة الساخرة أيضًا من الخصائص المميزة لهذا الأدب.

The fable-like stories in A Sense of the Whole - reminiscent of the best of Kawabata, Hrabal, Lispector, and Kafka - create profound effects on the listener within very short spaces. Small in size, but not in resonance, Siamak Vossoughi's stories feature characters who refuse to believe that we are unconnected, refuse to not aspire to the notion of the human family across all manner of differences.

In this moving collection of short stories and essays, Gordon Lee Johnson (Cupeño/Cahuilla) cements his voice not only as a wry commentator on American Indian reservation life but also as a master of fiction writing. In Johnson’s stories, all of which are set on the fictional San Ignacio reservation in Southern California, we meet unforgettable characters like Plato Pena, the Stanford-bound geek who reads Kahlil Gibran during intertribal softball games; hardboiled investigator Roddy Foo; and Etta, whose motto is “early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise”.

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, startling, and gloriously unique stories set among the Filipino communities of California and the Philippines - now with a new preface by the author, Monstress stands as a landmark of American multicultural short fiction. Lysley Tenorio's tales are framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies: tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, pop culture and high culture, the American and the Filipino.

Un nuevo libro de relatos del ganador del Premio IMPAC y el Premio Alfaguara de novela por El ruido de las cosas al caer.

How does a Mexican American, the son of poor immigrants, leave his border home and move to the heart of gringo America? How does he adapt to the worlds of wealth, elite universities, the rush and power of New York City? How does he make peace with a stern, old-fashioned father who has only known hard field labor his whole life? Troncoso tells his luminous stories through the lens of an exile adrift in the 21st century, his characters suffering from the loss of culture and language, the loss of roots and home as they adapt to the glittering promises of new worlds that seem so empty.

The characters in Songs for the Flames are men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes only in passing - but whose lives are changed forever, consumed by fire and by unexpected encounters and unyielding forces. A photographer becomes obsessed with the traumatic past that an elegant woman, a fellow guest staying at a countryside ranch, would rather leave behind. A military reunion forces a soldier to confront a troubling history, both personal and on a larger scale....

Established by the leaders of the country's only successful slave revolt in the mid-19th century, Cross River still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding. In lyrical prose and singular dialect, a saga beats forward that echoes the fables carried down for generations - like the screecher birds who swoop down for their periodic sacrifice, and the water women who lure men to wet deaths.

A stunning collection of fiction, diary entries, screenplays, and scripts by the brilliant African American artist and filmmaker.

The thirteen stories in Birds of Paradise Lost shimmer with humor and pathos as they chronicle the anguish and joy and bravery of America's newest Americans, the troubled lives of those who fled Vietnam and remade themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. The past memories of war and its aftermath; of murder, arrest, re-education camps, and new economic zones; of escape and shipwreck and atrocity are ever present in these wise and compassionate stories.

In stories charged by the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, grief, exes, and the profundities of friendship, She Is Haunted features injured ballerinas, cloned dogs, and competitive call centers in settings as far ranging as future and present Australia, New York City’s Chinatown, and suburban California.

Dos hermanos se enfrentan juntos a la maldad colectiva; un hombre revive la muerte del hijo de su amigo a la luz del LSD; en el cementerio de Obaba-Ugarte, dos conferenciantes pronuncian ante la multitud congregada una delirante charla sobre la vida y la muerte; un búho resulta ser una pieza indispensable para resolver varios crímenes.

Una mujer se enamora de un vecino por cómo cuida las plantas de su terraza. Un hombre organiza una fiesta con todos sus seres queridos para celebrar el final de una larga enfermedad. Una niña acompaña a su madre a ver pisos que nunca podrán permitirse y un padre lleva a su hija adoptada a conocer a su madre biológica....

Eric Walrond was a singular voice of the Harlem Renaissance, and Tropic Death is his most famous work - a collection that highlights his particular strength as a writer of short fiction. Over the course of these ten stories, Walrond vividly details the punishing realities of life and labor across the Caribbean, and yet the overall effect is far from grim. These are unsentimental yet startlingly beautiful portraits of the migrant experience, full of distinctive voices striving for an audience in a seemingly implacable world.

The fiction of Bonnie Jo Campbell has been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize. In this stunning collection—a National Book Award finalist—Campbell’s rural Michigan characters are both as jagged as rusty metal and as delicate as the light brush of fading dreams.

Anthony Bourdain chases the fumigation truck in Bergen County, New Jersey. Dave Eggers tells it straight: Illinois is Number 1. Louise Erdrich loses her bikini top in North Dakota. Jonathan Franzen gets waylaid by New York's publicist...and personal attorney...and historian...and geologist. John Hodgman explains why there is no such thing as a "Massachusettsean."

The American South is a distinctive place with a dramatic history and has significance beyond its regional context in the 21st century. The American South: A Very Short Introduction explores the history of the South as a cultural crossroads, a meeting place between Western Europe and West Africa. The South's beginnings illuminate the expansion of Europe into the New World, creating a colonial slave society that distinguished it from other parts of the United States but fostered commonalities with other colonial societies.

I ran into Derek while trying to escape the neighbor from hell. Instantly, we hit it off. Since he’s only here for three months and the microbrewery leaves me little time for commitments, it’s the perfect setup for a fling. He’s adventurous, challenges me, and he just gets me from the inside out.