What do you think?
The Strangers: Nine Stories by Nine Immigrant Writers Brought Together by One Concept
Nine short stories by nine immigrant writers brought together by one concept: the stranger.
- GenresShort StoriesChina
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 2, 2016
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 4, 2016
It is so rare to find a great short story collection, much less one of stories in translation. Translation is such a thankless job, even when done well, the reader can feel like she's reading something that's foreign. But in this rare volume, the writers and translators are perfectly paired up in their style so that each story reads effortlessly.
In this collection of stories with themes of alienation, betrayal, connections, belonging, and searching for a resolution, in short, what everyone goes through in life, one can experience the life of someone else. The writers here are all Chinese who have emigrated, which makes them strangers in their new land. As writers, they might already know alienation just from being in the lonely profession, and as immigrants, their skills of adaptation are put to the test. As the back cover blurb says, what do you picture when you think "Chinese"? The takeout guy, the dry cleaner, the quiet IT guy at work whose name you can't pronounce? This book will show a side of the familiar "stranger," the immigrant, that you've never seen.
In this collection of stories with themes of alienation, betrayal, connections, belonging, and searching for a resolution, in short, what everyone goes through in life, one can experience the life of someone else. The writers here are all Chinese who have emigrated, which makes them strangers in their new land. As writers, they might already know alienation just from being in the lonely profession, and as immigrants, their skills of adaptation are put to the test. As the back cover blurb says, what do you picture when you think "Chinese"? The takeout guy, the dry cleaner, the quiet IT guy at work whose name you can't pronounce? This book will show a side of the familiar "stranger," the immigrant, that you've never seen.
May 17, 2016
The great thing about this collection is that it not only includes the short stories, but also small interviews with the authors, so we might be able to understand more from where their writing comes from.
May 3, 2016
I read somewhere that reading novels is like having a serious relationship or even marriage but short stories are like flings. I am a long-term relationship person in this regard since I normally enjoy novels, not short stories, which always seem to give a snapshot and leave me feel incomplete and curious as to what happened before and after. But I really enjoyed reading The Strangers, which is an anthology of nine short stories, partly because these stories have a common theme and Anna Wang Yuan did a great job waving these stories together. Anna's editing and Q&A are like a master crochet work. There are three parts under the theme The Strangers, just like three patterns for the different parts of a crochet hat seamlessly connected by the interviews/Q&As. Another reason that I like this anthology is that the writers are all immigrant writers. Regardless whether they wrote the stories originally in English or Chinese, just like regardless if the crochet is done with size A or size H needle, I've enjoyed reading each one of them, maybe because, like Anna said in the forward, " I saw myself through every piece of their works". If I didn't see myself per se, I saw at least my shadow in them or the shadow of the people I know, and the shadow of that era when I grew up in China and the era that I came and have stayed in the U.S.
With that said, I still have preference, just like I am partial to size A crochet needle. Two of the stories are particularly interesting to me. Counting Down the Minutes by Allan Cho and Flowers Bloom, Flowers Fall by Malan. The former is about a short-lived love story that didn't work out. It attracted me, I guess, because it is different from the popular love stories that lasted long and exhausting, with an end that the hero and the heroine lived happily everafter or one of them died at the end of the story. But in Allan's story, the love itself died early, on the heroine's side. From the experience, she learned more about herself and grew out of the original infatuation.
The latter, Ma Lan's story intrigues me. On the one hand, it reminds me of "The Hours", a novel by Michael Cunningham, which tells a story of four women, including Virginia Woolf, living parallel lives at different times, and committing suicide in different ways. On the other hand, Ma Lan's story seems to be symbolic. The death of each of the four women seems to be a dying of part of one person, Amy. I don't fully understand the story, e.g. I don't know where the Bent Neck town is as it mentioned both Thanksgiving and Tomb-sweeping day, two holidays one observed in the US, one in China. I also don't know exactly when the story occurred. But the story is confusing in a good way. Maybe the writer purposely made it so. The issue of life and death is confusing, no one can claim that she/he has figured it out. Maybe the story is about human alienation which fits the theme "The Strangers" really well. I don't fully get it but I like it just the same.
With that said, I still have preference, just like I am partial to size A crochet needle. Two of the stories are particularly interesting to me. Counting Down the Minutes by Allan Cho and Flowers Bloom, Flowers Fall by Malan. The former is about a short-lived love story that didn't work out. It attracted me, I guess, because it is different from the popular love stories that lasted long and exhausting, with an end that the hero and the heroine lived happily everafter or one of them died at the end of the story. But in Allan's story, the love itself died early, on the heroine's side. From the experience, she learned more about herself and grew out of the original infatuation.
The latter, Ma Lan's story intrigues me. On the one hand, it reminds me of "The Hours", a novel by Michael Cunningham, which tells a story of four women, including Virginia Woolf, living parallel lives at different times, and committing suicide in different ways. On the other hand, Ma Lan's story seems to be symbolic. The death of each of the four women seems to be a dying of part of one person, Amy. I don't fully understand the story, e.g. I don't know where the Bent Neck town is as it mentioned both Thanksgiving and Tomb-sweeping day, two holidays one observed in the US, one in China. I also don't know exactly when the story occurred. But the story is confusing in a good way. Maybe the writer purposely made it so. The issue of life and death is confusing, no one can claim that she/he has figured it out. Maybe the story is about human alienation which fits the theme "The Strangers" really well. I don't fully get it but I like it just the same.
January 1, 2018
“Writers are minorities. Ethnic writers are a minority within a minority.”
The Strangers is an anthology of nine English short stories written by Chinese immigrants, and compiled into a paperback by Anna Wang Yuan. After each story is Anna Wang Yuan’s Q&A session with each respective author. For most of these featured authors, English is their second language. Their stories touch upon themes such as love, death, betrayal, hardships, perseverance, strangers and friendships. Some of the stories pertain to the authors’ personal experiences; other stories are woven out of creativity or external influences. My favorite short in the anthology is A Hero of Our Times by Rui Wang. Although his story is the lengthiest and most nonfiction out of all nine, weaving his experiences from childhood through China’s Cultural Revolution to his immigration to North America, his story was a straightforward, heartfelt and at times harrowing one.
As someone whose native language is English, I give hearty applause to each of the authors featured. It’s not easy to succinctly script your thoughts and imagination into words that flow and evoke, and even more challenging when English is your second or third language. As for the stories that were translated into English from Chinese, let’s commend the translator. (Although I’m not sure if some of the emotion or intention was lost during translation, some stories felt mediocre to me). Overall, a good effort from each of the authors dipping their toes into the English market. And thank you Anna Wang Yuan for providing the chance to minority writers, and for cracking open this genre to us readers.
The Strangers is an anthology of nine English short stories written by Chinese immigrants, and compiled into a paperback by Anna Wang Yuan. After each story is Anna Wang Yuan’s Q&A session with each respective author. For most of these featured authors, English is their second language. Their stories touch upon themes such as love, death, betrayal, hardships, perseverance, strangers and friendships. Some of the stories pertain to the authors’ personal experiences; other stories are woven out of creativity or external influences. My favorite short in the anthology is A Hero of Our Times by Rui Wang. Although his story is the lengthiest and most nonfiction out of all nine, weaving his experiences from childhood through China’s Cultural Revolution to his immigration to North America, his story was a straightforward, heartfelt and at times harrowing one.
As someone whose native language is English, I give hearty applause to each of the authors featured. It’s not easy to succinctly script your thoughts and imagination into words that flow and evoke, and even more challenging when English is your second or third language. As for the stories that were translated into English from Chinese, let’s commend the translator. (Although I’m not sure if some of the emotion or intention was lost during translation, some stories felt mediocre to me). Overall, a good effort from each of the authors dipping their toes into the English market. And thank you Anna Wang Yuan for providing the chance to minority writers, and for cracking open this genre to us readers.
“I think the English book market is much more mature than the Chinese book market. There is not much room for strangers to break into. English book reviews are also much more serious than Chinese ones. If a reviewer doesn’t like your book, he/she either neglects you or criticizes you, no matter how close a friend you are to him/her or how much you pay him/her. In China, reviewers praise books not worth reading to return favors offered by publishers or authors. Readers generally think of themselves as smart and don’t trust book reviews, but they’ll be tricked into buying worthless books from time to time. The Chinese book market is now like one-night stand, and it is easy to lose yourself there.” –Jieru Zhou
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews