With a deceptively simple yet graceful style, and in the tradition of Lara Vapnyar, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Gish Jen, Frances Hwang captures the thousand minor battles waged in the homes of immigrants--struggles to preserve timehonored traditions or break free of them, to maintain authority or challenge it, and to take advantage of modern excesses without diluting one's ethnic identity.
In -Garden City, - a weary Chinese couple, struggling to evict their deadbeat tenant, is forced to face the aftermath of their teenage son's death from cancer. And in -The Old Gentleman, - a daughter becomes...