Alexandra Chang

Stories

Tomb Sweeping

Abigail F

Oh, these women braid their luck and others' pity together, because what else do they have at their disposal? If, at a young age, you feel like you can achieve anything, and then you realize along the way that you were living in a fantasy, how do you respond? How do you decide what is rational or not?

On his first day of elementary school, FuFu walks Wei He to the gate, turns around, and walks back to the apartment crying. Not from being apart from him, but from being alone with herself again.

 What was the use of her education if this is all she would achieve? It is a riddle she repeats often and without answer.

Lying there in her cramped room, in her small bed, Füfu, now eighteen, feels as though her world is the least significant seed in a pomegranate. She yearns for the whole fruit.

“I know, I know—I’m pathetic. I assure you, nobody hates me more than I hate myself.” 

“Sure. Living. Having to exist every day. Being trapped in a bag of skin.”

“But if your parents made mistakes, and their parents made worse mistakes, and their parents made even worse mistakes, you can’t live your life thinking nobody had to pay for those mistakes, can you?” 

“My grandparents would be among the lesser spirits who descendants had neglected to provide for them.” 

“In part, she hadn’t needed to check in on her parents, since she was talking to them on a daily basis.” 

“That’s kind of weird. I know you think it’s weird. I can see you watching me, with that look, like, Is she losing it? So crazy people know they’re crazy? This is normal for pregnancy, though, I read it on a forum.” 

“Then I realized I’ve been self-absorbed, that our relationship has been incredibly one-sided. How could I be so selfish?” 

“I have never felt more seen and supported than by my algo.” 

“You and Didi will hate me if I make him leave. You think it’s my job to take care of him, even though we’re divorced.”

“They are both older. He could stay, he could live in her homes he could exist in this place.” 

“My daughter. You’re all grown up now,” he says. “I know I haven’t always been the best dad, but I always do what I say, don’t I?” 

“I can’t think of another friendship like the one I had with Klara, and I haven’t felt so deeply for a friend since. Sometimes I wonder if Klara knew me better than my boyfriend knows me now.” 

“And here he is, still working in a grocery store, still in the same town, hanging out with Dustin and Ollie, still doing the same shit.” 

“At every moment I’ve been told what I can and cannot do, and still—in spite of what my parents say, in spite of what my husband says, in spite of what the very law says—I have lived, and so what, so what if it was illegal, the money I made, it was mine, and how many people can say that for themselves, isn’t this what everyone wants, to have done something all their own, not for anything or anyone else, not for Wei He, not for Liu Zheng, not for Mama and Baba, but for me, only for me, how many people—

“Not from being apart from him, but from being alone with herself again.” 

“It seems, in this case, he who grows up without want has the luxury of satisfaction. She who grows up wanting is never satiated.” 

I loved the first book of hers I read and highly enjoyed this collection as well. The various perspectives, cultures, and settings all coming together to tackle what literature comes down to: looking at what it means to be human. 

Not much of a short-story person, but like 75% of these resonated with me at one point in my life or another. It felt really comforting to know other people have the same feelings at me, even if they are fictional. 

soph 

Dove in with no expectations whatsoever (and I mainly bought it because I liked the title—hate to admit it but I am unfortunately that guy who judges books by their title) then resurfaced with my perspective on how storytelling should go and move and leave a mark COMPLETELY CHANGED.

It’s a mélange of genres that felt like they should be pieces of a whole but just… not quite. You’d wish for crossovers—for this character to come across this character on the grocery this character works at—and maybe they did. Just not inside these specific pages.

The pacing is as smooth as a car ride that lulls you on the surface of slumber, leaving you adrift between the threshold of Asleep and Awake, making you hope it will last a little longer, just until you can rest completely, but without warning, it steps on the break roughly, jolting you awake, saying, 

“We’re here. You’ve reached your destination.”

 And maybe the car will go farther down the block and to a different city. Just not with you in it.

The intentionality behind the povs are too spot on that like water effortlessly flowing, every story takes on the voice of its narrator—as if each was written by different people and not a single author. Is the character talking to me or is there a separate entity acting as a third party between us? Are there other characters, or a much more powerful entity wanting to speak up and switch up the perspective if only they weren’t restricted by the margins? We’ll never fully know.

Because sometimes, stories are just pieces. They are whole that way.

frances

Dove in with no expectations whatsoever (and I mainly bought it because I liked the title—hate to admit it but I am unfortunately that guy who judges books by their title) then resurfaced with my perspective on how storytelling should go and move and leave a mark COMPLETELY CHANGED.

It’s a mélange of genres that felt like they should be pieces of a whole but just… not quite. You’d wish for crossovers—for this character to come across this character on the grocery this character works at—and maybe they did. Just not inside these specific pages.

The pacing is as smooth as a car ride that lulls you on the surface of slumber, leaving you adrift between the threshold of Asleep and Awake, making you hope it will last a little longer, just until you can rest completely, but without warning, it steps on the break roughly, jolting you awake, saying, “We’re here. You’ve reached your destination.” And maybe the car will go farther down the block and to a different city. Just not with you in it.

The intentionality behind the povs are too spot on that like water effortlessly flowing, every story takes on the voice of its narrator—as if each was written by different people and not a single author. Is the character talking to me or is there a separate entity acting as a third party between us? Are there other characters, or a much more powerful entity wanting to speak up and switch up the perspective if only they weren’t restricted by the margins? We’ll never fully know.

Because sometimes, stories are just pieces. They are whole that way.

I liked the stories but not enough to remember the wholes of them. I think that they did flow well one right into the other though. To human with family and vulnerabilities in an ever changing society and all that jazz. 

Tomb Sweeping Stories

Reviews

Highlights