My next collection is I'm Afraid of Americans. In some ways it's hard to know what to say about these stories & vignettes.
They are set in and are also from the South Bay area of Los Angeles during the '80s, after decades of immigration from Back East and The Midwest, Mexico, Central America, Vietnam and the Pacific Islands. The pieces are portraits of Americans and others, moments of culture shock, the framework of American culture seen through very foreign eyes.
Some are specifically set in and around a minority-majority high school in the aftermath of Proposition 13 and Ronald Reagan's ascent; others are snapshots of souls in a zeitgeist.
Three selections have now been published at Unlikely Stories:
Learning About Electricity
Processing Data
Roberta's Funeral
Thank you, Unlikely Stories!
Last year The Gravity of the Thing published an early version of The Cohort of Mist, Fog and Fire from the same collection. Thank you, TGOTT, and see you at Wordstock!
"Therapy" appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal in 2013, and in Vine Leaves' 2013 Best Of.
I'm Afraid of Americans will be published in Spring, 2018 and will be added to the fine selection at GobQ Books. The print edition will also be available at Mother Foucault's Bookshop, Powell's, Broadway Books and Amazon. And there will be e-books.
