cover image Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories

Phoenix Eyes and Other Stories

Russell Charles Leong. University of Washington Press, $39.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-295-97944-1

Leong comments ironically on the Asian-American experience in this impressionistic, uneven collection of 14 stories. In a first section, ""Leaving,"" the effects of hybrid culture are foregrounded in five stories about new immigrants. ""Bodhi Leaves,"" the first of the group, tells of a Vietnamese monk relocated to a temple in Orange County, N.J., whose search for an artist capable of painting a traditional many-leaved Bodhi tree distracts him from the difficulties of adjusting to a new country. The second section, ""Samsara,"" consists of stories with sexual themes. Notable here is ""Hemispheres,"" which is set in the academic/avant-garde interface with which Leong, the editor of Amerasia Journal and a filmmaker himself, must be familiar. The narrator, Bryan, works for the Los Angeles Film Institute. The week that he decides he is sexually out of service--which, for him, means no more boyfriends--he gets messages from three different women, all of whom are looking for sperm donations. The last section, ""Paradise,"" contains the title story, which is a long account of life in the hung kung syan, a trans-Pacific call boy service. Terence, who has ""phoenix eyes""--eyes of ""longing and lust""--goes to Taiwan after college with his lover. When he and his lover fall out, Terence is picked up by P., a handsome jet-setter with gigolo connections, and given an education in seduction. Circular in form, the story starts and ends with P.'s funeral. Some of Leong's stories are slight, but the best of them exploit the stresses of sexual desire and family relationships, and probe the cultural forces shaping the immigrant experience. (July)