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All Roads Lead to Blood
Unflinching portrayals of desire and alienation fill Bonnie Chau's award-winning story collection. Chau's short fiction explores the lives of young women navigating love, failure, heritage, and memory, and presents a fresh perspective of second-generation Chinese-Americans. Moving back and forth between California and New York, and ranging as far away as Paris, Chau’s exquisitely written stories are bold, highly imaginative, and haunting, featuring characters who defiantly exert their individuality.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
166 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 12 reviews
September 15, 2018
Some delicious sentences comprising some dead-end stories.
May 1, 2020
ALL ROADS LEAD TO BLOOD -- stories by Bonnie Chau--are searing, layered stories set on the west coast, primarily in Orange County, California -- land of pristine suburbs and in Los Angeles. Her stories focus on a turbulent life as a Chinese-American young woman-- the implicit and explicit racism she encounters, the objectification of her by men, are telling. These are expansively written stories --with sex, body image, the struggle for relationships as central themes. An author to watch!
Interestingly, I read at the same time... BEAUTY by Christina Chiu is the story of being young, Chinese-American, fashion conscious, and body conscious in New York City. It's sharp-edged at times, especially the main character, Amy Wong. Her life is one of difficult relationships, with her mother, her sister, the myriad of men in her life--and herself. This is a tightly-written, sometimes explicit/erotic novel. A compulsive read! Christina Chiu is another author to watch...
Why these two books? They came directly as a set from SFWP PRESS-- thank you for curated sets like this! Viva the small, independent presses!! I would strongly suggest to any book club that it would be a great discussion to read both together!
--Caroline
Interestingly, I read at the same time... BEAUTY by Christina Chiu is the story of being young, Chinese-American, fashion conscious, and body conscious in New York City. It's sharp-edged at times, especially the main character, Amy Wong. Her life is one of difficult relationships, with her mother, her sister, the myriad of men in her life--and herself. This is a tightly-written, sometimes explicit/erotic novel. A compulsive read! Christina Chiu is another author to watch...
Why these two books? They came directly as a set from SFWP PRESS-- thank you for curated sets like this! Viva the small, independent presses!! I would strongly suggest to any book club that it would be a great discussion to read both together!
--Caroline
January 24, 2019
So many things about the protagonists in these stories worked for me. First, Bonnie Chau writes my reality: 2nd gen Chinese American suburban Californian. Every time she mentioned an image that, however immaterial-seeming, was fundamental to my upbringing, something in me whimpered: boba shops that also sell froyo, dead grass. Schools with outdoor instead of indoor cafeterias, gated communities with European street names (both from "A Golden State"). Ahh!
I also loved the narrators' voices. Passive, alienated, observing moments/feelings that might seem dramatic with a lost/dry tone --
a few choices lines to exemplify: my favorite sex scene of all time, where a WASPy man holds his penis, "guiding it like a flashlight, where to go? What to do? What to see?"
"she had realized she was in love, in love even with his cargo pants" --
in transition periods, not understood by partners/family. With passion, loneliness that are hinted at but not surfaced, even in their own internal narration -- really driving their lostness! I highlighted this line -- "I liked miniature things. I like the idea of things getting smaller and smaller, but not disappearing" (from "Ghosts") -- because it seemed to capture these women, these young Chinese American women, and their view of themselves in the world at these points in their lives. There is the trope of the passive Asian woman, and I appreciate that Chau doesn't defensively reject it as much as she shows that in spite of the negativity of the stereotype, these women are deeply interesting, vibrant, and relatable.
And there is some amazing, creative work at the sentence level. Her repetition of sentence beginnings for a flat, spiraling (in the way that the protagonists do in their lives) effect. In contrast to but working together with that, specific moments with strong, ironic affect, e.g.: "We cannot stop saying this word -- oh man, our nuptials -- they are fucking… impending!" "I see a red mark on my forearm, not a cut, nothing breaking through skin, but a long red mark, and a small bruise-colored mark below it, like an exclamation point. ! Yes. ! You did it! Go! Wow!"
My favorite stories (in roughly decreasing order): "Stevie Versus the Negative Space," "I See My Eye in Your Eye," "A Golden State," "Desert Dreams are Always in Green," "Ghosts."
Generally, I liked stories like the above -- longer, more realistic -- than the shorter, more fantastical ones. There was just more room to explore character, and the voice worked better for me.
I also loved the narrators' voices. Passive, alienated, observing moments/feelings that might seem dramatic with a lost/dry tone --
a few choices lines to exemplify: my favorite sex scene of all time, where a WASPy man holds his penis, "guiding it like a flashlight, where to go? What to do? What to see?"
"she had realized she was in love, in love even with his cargo pants" --
in transition periods, not understood by partners/family. With passion, loneliness that are hinted at but not surfaced, even in their own internal narration -- really driving their lostness! I highlighted this line -- "I liked miniature things. I like the idea of things getting smaller and smaller, but not disappearing" (from "Ghosts") -- because it seemed to capture these women, these young Chinese American women, and their view of themselves in the world at these points in their lives. There is the trope of the passive Asian woman, and I appreciate that Chau doesn't defensively reject it as much as she shows that in spite of the negativity of the stereotype, these women are deeply interesting, vibrant, and relatable.
And there is some amazing, creative work at the sentence level. Her repetition of sentence beginnings for a flat, spiraling (in the way that the protagonists do in their lives) effect. In contrast to but working together with that, specific moments with strong, ironic affect, e.g.: "We cannot stop saying this word -- oh man, our nuptials -- they are fucking… impending!" "I see a red mark on my forearm, not a cut, nothing breaking through skin, but a long red mark, and a small bruise-colored mark below it, like an exclamation point. ! Yes. ! You did it! Go! Wow!"
My favorite stories (in roughly decreasing order): "Stevie Versus the Negative Space," "I See My Eye in Your Eye," "A Golden State," "Desert Dreams are Always in Green," "Ghosts."
Generally, I liked stories like the above -- longer, more realistic -- than the shorter, more fantastical ones. There was just more room to explore character, and the voice worked better for me.
June 15, 2019
I think sometimes having all the stories collected and reading them all in one go can really take away from the experience of an author's distinctive voice, which I guess is really just an inelegant way of saying that instead of something that grows in its charm and ability to compel and fascinate, for better or worse, these stories in sequence echoed each other in ways that felt repetitive, revealing and transparent, and worse of all, boring. (An issue I also had with another short story collection I read a couple months ago, and another one I felt strongly positive about at the start.)
In an interview, Bonnie Chau says,
And where I think the stories are weakest is where this tends show, a lot.
Favourite stories:
"Monstrosity"
"The Burgeoning"
In an interview, Bonnie Chau says,
I used to set out to, like, write a story, and then I would write a story. I still do that sometimes, but it’s rare. So I write in these Google Docs. I’ll write diary shit in it, and I’ll be like, “Oh I’ve been kind of vaguely working on a short story idea,” and then the next paragraph after my diaristic shit is like, “Oh I’m going to write the next paragraph of this short story.” And then the next paragraph will just be whatever I feel like writing, whether that’s what happened today or what I’m thinking about, or a fictional piece that I’m working on, all of it goes in the same document.
After a while, I’ll go through the last however many months worth of stuff and I’ll cull pieces, and a lot of that will be the short story parts, but some of that will be other parts as well, because oftentimes the short story I’m writing will have some sort of relevance or connection with what I’ve been thinking about in my personal life. A lot of it is mixed up that way—and sometimes I actually can’t tell which is which!
And where I think the stories are weakest is where this tends show, a lot.
Favourite stories:
"Monstrosity"
"The Burgeoning"
June 4, 2020
Bonnie Chau’s collection of short stories, All Roads Lead to Blood, largely center on the musings of free-spirited female Chinese American characters concerning their relationships with men, family, and their own identity. The stories are mostly written in a stream of consciousness style that is out of favor in today’s popular literature, with Toni Morrison perhaps representing the last of a generation who achieved a level of critical and popular success using the technique. There is a reason it is out of favor among readers, as Chau’s stories are difficult to penetrate and there is no semblance of plot in any of the tales, and this seems her intent, to rebel against the stream of convention, as reflected in her collection of lost and rebellious female characters. It is doubtful Chau’s collection received much attention from readers, but it did win the favor of some critics, receiving at least one obscure literary award, the panel of whom might have been fans of Virginia Woolf. Chau channels Woolf much more than Amy Tan in conveying the angst of an unmarried Chinese American woman. Chau also uses allegory and extensive metaphor in her stories, illustrated for example in her Little Red Riding Hood allegory with heavy sexual overtone (the big bad wolf waiting for Red Riding Hood in bed), though that is not the first time it has been used in such a way, though Chau is original in making Red Riding Hood an innocent Chinese American girl.
Chau’s first story “Monstrosity” features a Chinese American woman’s twisted relationship with her only Chinese boyfriend, and apart from a sexual interlude with a Chinese co-worker in a restaurant in “Medusa Jellyfish,” and a torrid relationship with “Omar” the lost (Latino?) love ghost in “Ghosts,” most of the other stories feature a collection of white boyfriends, including for example the never-named “golden boy” in “Stevie Versus The Negative Space.”
Sex is introduced as a theme in Monstrosity and sexuality is a thematic thread in most of the other stories. In one memorable passage in Monstrosity, the main character refers to the boyfriend, Arthur Apollo Asher, holding his penis against the opening of her vagina, “guiding it like a flashlight, where to go, what to do? What to see?” The female characters seem to have an ambivalent, almost nonchalant attitude toward sex. It seems as if they are using it as a tool of rebellion, perhaps against their parents, particularly their Chinese mothers who desperately want their daughters to marry, and to be safe, as in the family’s gated neighborhood in Irvine in “The Golden State,” or is it a form of self-hatred, when the characters deliver a multitude of blow jobs, or get spanked by married men in affairs, or have bruises on their knees and legs following sex on all fours, or are they just seeking sexual gratification to self-medicate and alleviate the pain of being who they are and what they have experienced? These are all questions that the stories illuminate, or don’t illuminate, just like the metaphorical flashlight searching for a dark and wet (we see this descriptor frequently) passage, to convey the confusion and contradictory musings inherent in nearly all (if not all) the stories.
Skin is another term we see frequently. In “I See My Eye In Your Eye,” the female protagonist states, I wish I were a snake. Rubbing, rubbing at my neck, rubbing until my entire body of skin, a skinsuit, rubs off in one piece, a one-piece skinsuit. I would shed, molt, all the fucking time. Get the shit out of my skin, get the hell out of Dodge. We might conclude the Chinese-American character is uncomfortable in her skin, and this theme resonates through other stories, and literally so in “The Very History of Your Body,” where the protagonist in the substory, The Story of How to Carve with Vinegar, says, As a young girl, I couldn’t be rid of my skin fast enough (she suffered from a litany of skin diseases). Do the characters wish their skin were “white,” as in Caucasian, to fit into American society? In “Somebody Else in the Room,” we see this passage (with interpretations in parentheses): If enough (white) men press their penises into her vagina, maybe she can turn into someone (white) who does not get asked this question. What are you? A poet. No, no. What are you? Like... Oh. I’m American. No, you know what I mean. Where are you from? California. No, like, what are you? Like, Korean, Japanese, Chinese... Are those my only options?
In “I See My Eye in Your Eye,” the protagonist quotes her sister’s UC Berkeley sociology paper, “These second-generation immigrants are proto-western aliens: their survivor-class parents winnowing down into striver-class offspring, cultivated in a family dynamic that is pressurized by overachievement and suburban stasis. When these suburbanite children masquerade as white-trash wannabes in the big cities, they are defiantly enacting—performing, even—a sublimation of their parents’ upper-middle-class dreams.” She comments, Ta-dah! I find this very impressive at the time. “I See My Eye in Your Eye” was one of the more comprehensible stories in the collection where we could detect a sociological construct for the lost generation of American Asian kids who reject their immigrant parent’s dreams for them, and rebel, akin to Marlon Brando’s character in “The Wild One,” when asked what he was rebelling against, he says, “What have you got?”
At times, it seems the main characters struggle with their own femininity. “All Roads Lead to Blood,” the book’s title, alludes to the menstrual cycle that interferes with the protagonist’s ability to masturbate and have sex in “Triptych Portrait with Doors in Closed Position,” although two of her boyfriends, “Gus” and “the artist” did not seem to mind, joking respectively that it “looked like we killed a squirrel in bed,” and “I definitely had to wash my mouth out with Listerine.” These lines would amuse most male readers, and in this story at least, the point seems less about ethnic identity than female identity, lost boyfriends, and remaining unattached, Chinese or not.
Chau’s first story “Monstrosity” features a Chinese American woman’s twisted relationship with her only Chinese boyfriend, and apart from a sexual interlude with a Chinese co-worker in a restaurant in “Medusa Jellyfish,” and a torrid relationship with “Omar” the lost (Latino?) love ghost in “Ghosts,” most of the other stories feature a collection of white boyfriends, including for example the never-named “golden boy” in “Stevie Versus The Negative Space.”
Sex is introduced as a theme in Monstrosity and sexuality is a thematic thread in most of the other stories. In one memorable passage in Monstrosity, the main character refers to the boyfriend, Arthur Apollo Asher, holding his penis against the opening of her vagina, “guiding it like a flashlight, where to go, what to do? What to see?” The female characters seem to have an ambivalent, almost nonchalant attitude toward sex. It seems as if they are using it as a tool of rebellion, perhaps against their parents, particularly their Chinese mothers who desperately want their daughters to marry, and to be safe, as in the family’s gated neighborhood in Irvine in “The Golden State,” or is it a form of self-hatred, when the characters deliver a multitude of blow jobs, or get spanked by married men in affairs, or have bruises on their knees and legs following sex on all fours, or are they just seeking sexual gratification to self-medicate and alleviate the pain of being who they are and what they have experienced? These are all questions that the stories illuminate, or don’t illuminate, just like the metaphorical flashlight searching for a dark and wet (we see this descriptor frequently) passage, to convey the confusion and contradictory musings inherent in nearly all (if not all) the stories.
Skin is another term we see frequently. In “I See My Eye In Your Eye,” the female protagonist states, I wish I were a snake. Rubbing, rubbing at my neck, rubbing until my entire body of skin, a skinsuit, rubs off in one piece, a one-piece skinsuit. I would shed, molt, all the fucking time. Get the shit out of my skin, get the hell out of Dodge. We might conclude the Chinese-American character is uncomfortable in her skin, and this theme resonates through other stories, and literally so in “The Very History of Your Body,” where the protagonist in the substory, The Story of How to Carve with Vinegar, says, As a young girl, I couldn’t be rid of my skin fast enough (she suffered from a litany of skin diseases). Do the characters wish their skin were “white,” as in Caucasian, to fit into American society? In “Somebody Else in the Room,” we see this passage (with interpretations in parentheses): If enough (white) men press their penises into her vagina, maybe she can turn into someone (white) who does not get asked this question. What are you? A poet. No, no. What are you? Like... Oh. I’m American. No, you know what I mean. Where are you from? California. No, like, what are you? Like, Korean, Japanese, Chinese... Are those my only options?
In “I See My Eye in Your Eye,” the protagonist quotes her sister’s UC Berkeley sociology paper, “These second-generation immigrants are proto-western aliens: their survivor-class parents winnowing down into striver-class offspring, cultivated in a family dynamic that is pressurized by overachievement and suburban stasis. When these suburbanite children masquerade as white-trash wannabes in the big cities, they are defiantly enacting—performing, even—a sublimation of their parents’ upper-middle-class dreams.” She comments, Ta-dah! I find this very impressive at the time. “I See My Eye in Your Eye” was one of the more comprehensible stories in the collection where we could detect a sociological construct for the lost generation of American Asian kids who reject their immigrant parent’s dreams for them, and rebel, akin to Marlon Brando’s character in “The Wild One,” when asked what he was rebelling against, he says, “What have you got?”
At times, it seems the main characters struggle with their own femininity. “All Roads Lead to Blood,” the book’s title, alludes to the menstrual cycle that interferes with the protagonist’s ability to masturbate and have sex in “Triptych Portrait with Doors in Closed Position,” although two of her boyfriends, “Gus” and “the artist” did not seem to mind, joking respectively that it “looked like we killed a squirrel in bed,” and “I definitely had to wash my mouth out with Listerine.” These lines would amuse most male readers, and in this story at least, the point seems less about ethnic identity than female identity, lost boyfriends, and remaining unattached, Chinese or not.
August 15, 2021
Gorgeous phrasings, and some really poetic writing - sometimes it works, other times the stories collapse under the weight of metaphor, allusion, adjective and introspection. Clearly a really talented author and some of the stories sing - when it's good it's very good - but too narrow and singular to sustain a collection in a satisfactory way (to me). There's a very singular psychological 'type' of protagonist here (presumably autobiographical) which gets slightly overwhelming through so many reflections, refractions and turnings. Although I imagine if you identified with this certain kind of melancholy, listless, sexually iconoclastic, artistically frustrated psyche, you'd love this collection. Will read anything future the author writes with anticipation - with greater control I think these styles could be harnessed in thr pursuit or something really wonderful. 3 star.
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October 10, 2019Personal favorites: "A Golden State" and "The Burgeoning."
In particular, "The Burgeoning" wrings new insight out of the well-trod "Little Red Riding Hood." It's probably not coincidental that it's also Chau at her most playful.
In particular, "The Burgeoning" wrings new insight out of the well-trod "Little Red Riding Hood." It's probably not coincidental that it's also Chau at her most playful.
January 25, 2023
wonderful and entertaining little stories, albeit many that are a bit forgettable. the prose is gorgeous, but the narrators/characters through the different stories all blended together for me. enjoyed the second half more i think!
September 27, 2025
I gave this one 3/5 stars. While I did enjoy Chau’s writing style and several of the stories, I felt there was a lot of repetition. I had to go back and check the title of stories fairly often as the characters, their circumstances, and the setting tended to blur together.
January 25, 2019
Once, that say, people wrote love letters. It only counted as love if the love was not there anymore. It only counted as love letters if the letters were all that was left. There was love, war, and afterwards, letters floated like debris, back to the ground. Nothing was around. There was nothing left, nothing but a very thin air. 108
But someday I would be remembering it. I did not like to think of that, because you only remember things if they’ve gone away. Or if you yourself have gone away. 138
But someday I would be remembering it. I did not like to think of that, because you only remember things if they’ve gone away. Or if you yourself have gone away. 138
May 9, 2020
most references to 'Lust, Caution'
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