 |
Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales
by
Eleanor Bluestein
Price $16.95 paper, 234 pages
ISBN 978-1-886157-64-4
Winner of the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short
Fiction, selected by Marly Swick
Highly Recommended,
Boston Authors Club
Julia Ward Howe Book Awards
Finalist,
ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year
Finalist,
USABookNews.com Best Books 2008
In this original, sparkling, culturally savvy and
highly entertaining collection of linked stories set in a mythical but
utterly believable small country in southeast Asia, Bluestein displays a
brilliant sense of craft as well as cultural ventriloquism, writing equally
convincingly from the point of view of both Westerners and Easterners--a
tour guide, a feminist beauty queen, an impoverished farmer working on an
assembly line that manufactures robot dogs, an American artist run amok in
Ayama Na, two playwrights with difference philosophies of life collaborating
on a doomed production--these are just some of the unforgettable characters
in this striking collection. In the tradition of Robert Olen Butler and Bob
Shacochis, this is a writer who illuminates our cultural differences while
exploring the intricacies of the human condition.
—Marly Swick
Bluestein brings a versatile, captivating voice to her debut story
collection set in the fictional Asian country of Ayama Na…. Bluestein
explores with affection and a wicked sense of humor the excesses and
arrogance of American culture amid "a nation so much older, wiser, and
sadder than theirs."
—Publishers Weekly
The universality with which she approaches human suffering and desire,
regardless of race, culture, or place, makes Bluestein a writer to watch.
—Booklist
Both natives of Ayama Na and westerners caught in the cultural divide are
grist for Bluestein’s literary mill. A one-legged red-headed whore, drug
dealers, families both devoted and estranged, autocratic fathers, a fawning
but angry tour guide, the aging proprietors of a café that serves both tea
and wisdom—all reflect on family and cultural conflicts in ways that
illuminate how much we citizens of the world share. These Ayama Na tales are
sly, sensuous and sagacious—profoundly funny and profoundly serious.
— Al
Christman, Target Hiroshima
ABSOLUTELY ABSORBING—This little war-decimated country of Ayama Na in
Southeast Asia with its totally unique cast of characters create such a
strong indigenous atmosphere that we can believe we are there. Ah, but there
is not there: Ayama Na is a fictitious land making efforts to repair itself,
and return to its old traditions, but at the same time to attain some of the
seductive wonders and excitement of the new ways that have invaded it during
the coup.When we get to the end we are so regretful to leave Ayama Na. We
may need to return
—Felice Holman, Slake's Limbo
Eleanor Bluestein has worked as a science teacher, editor of science
textbooks, and designer of multimedia educational materials for Internet
delivery. For a decade, she co-edited Crawl Out Your Window, a San
Diego based literary journal featuring the work of local writers and
artists. She lives with her husband in La Jolla, California, where she
writes fiction and volunteers as a court appointed special advocate for
foster children. Tea & Other Ayama Na Tales
is her first book.
|
|
