My Dear You: Stories

Khong’s (Real Americans) story collection uses elements of the fantastical and the absurd to comment on contemporary problems. Her main characters are Chinese or Chinese American women who struggle to reconcile how they distill their own wants and needs from those that society expects them to have. In one story, the U.S. government, in an attempt to lower the rate of violent crime, injects people with a drug that makes them perceive everyone as the same race and gender as themselves. In another, a woman struggling to get pregnant adopts a cat that brings ghosts of her former friends and lovers into her home, allowing her to see the other lives she could have lived. In a third, a group of Asian women play a prank on a white man who has taken them all on the exact same date. The 10 thought-provoking stories range from tender to sinister to funny to sad, and they won’t quickly leave readers’ minds.

[CORRECTION NOTICE: We found an editorial error in the original review; this online version has been corrected.]