Rigoberta Menchú Tum is telling the stories of her Mayan girlhood in The Girl from Chimel. (So it turns out that you can discover a Nobel Peace Prize winner by reading a storybook, by dabbling in the backlist of a favourite indie press.) Although born into poverty in
Just as "Jesse and Meribeth" seems to be a story about MaryBeth but really reveals so much more about Jessie herself, "Eskimo" appears to be about all the people on the plane with Mary Jo, but it's really all about Mary Jo. Nonetheless, it begins with talk of the passengers
The first time that I finished reading this story, I thought it was all about happiness. No doubt influenced by the last line and by the knowledge of later Alice Munro stories pulling that theme to their hearts. (The collection Too Much Happiness immediately comes to mind.) After I read
The characters in Yasuko Thanh's stories are whirlwinded out of their routine lives, whether because they stepped into the chaos or because it was heading straight for them. They nurse their lovers through illness (or don't). They make remedies from flowers and roots (or smoke them). They see ghosts (or
It's not something you hear much about anymore: once, people more commonly pitched fits, threw fits, had fits, staged fits. Hissy fits. Crying fits. (Now rants and tantrums.) A fit of rage. A fit of pique. A fit of temper. Blustery and ephemeral. Unpredictable and dramatic. Fits, whether in human nature
