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Gods of Want: Stories

  • Book
  • Jul 12, 2022
  • #ShortStory #LGBTQ+ #Fiction
K-Ming Chang
@KMingChang
(Author)
www.goodreads.com
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3.88/5 450 ratings
1 Recommender
1 Mention
1 Collection
Startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women, from the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary In “A... Show More

Startling stories that center the bodies, memories, myths, and relationships of Asian American women, from the National Book Award “5 Under 35” honoree and author of Bestiary

In “Auntland,” a steady stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking surreptitious kisses from women at temple, buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests, and hatching plans to name their daughter “Dog.” In “The Chorus of Dead Cousins,” ghost-cousins cross space, seas, and skies to haunt their live-cousin, wife to a storm-chaser. In “Xífù,” a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to rid the house of her. In “Mariela,” two girls explore one another’s bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark while in “Virginia Slims,” a woman from a cigarette ad comes to life. And in “Resident Aliens,” a former slaughterhouse serves as a residence to a series of widows, each harboring her own calamitous secrets.

With each tale, K-Ming Chang gives us her own take on a surrealism that mixes myth and migration, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian. Stunningly told in her feminist fabulist style, these are uncanny stories peeling back greater questions of power and memory.

(From Goodreads)

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Number of Pages: 224

ISBN: 0593241584

ISBN-13: 9780593241585

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Laura Sackton @laurasackton · Dec 15, 2022
  • Curated in THE BEST LGBTQ+ BOOKS OF 2022
These stories, mostly about queer Asian American women, are eerie and beautiful, dazzling and strange. They are about prophetic aunts and hungry widows, demanding ghosts and girls who bring about their own transformations. Chang’s characters live in the in-between spaces: between genders, cultures, and continents, between human and creature, between living and haunting. The writing is electric and vivid, and some of the stories read like short prose poems — all image and theme and character.
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