cover image Cultural Revolution: Stories

Cultural Revolution: Stories

Norman Wong. Persea Books, $21 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-89255-197-2

Wong's debut collection of 11 linked stories sparsely chronicles four generations of a Chinese-American family. A woman's reluctant journey from mainland China to Hong Kong as she escapes the invading Japanese frames the brief, absorbing opening section, ``Mai Wah.'' Dreams shape several stories in the second section, in which Mai Wah's grown grandson, Wei, and his family adapt to their new lives in Honolulu. In ``A Nice Chinese Girl,'' Wei dreams of owning a car in order to properly date Marie, who dreams of owning a restaurant; in ``Open House,'' Wei's cousins dream of buying a new home in the suburbs. The best stories deal with Michael, Wei's son, inching toward accepting his homosexuality. In ``The Chinese Barber,'' Michael develops an infatuation with an American boy he meets at a mall; in ``Ordinary Chinese People,'' he attempts suicide, distraught over the inattentiveness of his track coach. Irony fuels the final section, ``Cultural Revolution,'' in which Wei returns to China to retrace his grandmother's escape for Michael, who now eschews everything Chinese. Wong's choppy prose works well in conveying his characters' difficulty with English, but it robs these finely crafted stories of rich detail and prevents them from achieving the lyrical moments the material suggests. (Mar.)