​The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang is a collection of stories about Chinese immigrants and their children trying to survive and exist within America. These stories exist within longing and grief, while their characters fight to understand why they’re there, and what to do about their situations. I enjoyed stories such as ‘The Subject’, which is about a painter finding connection and betrayal in her elderly roommate, ‘Any Good Wife’, about a couple that has moved to America and the wife is trying to fit in by cooking odd American meals, ‘Knowing’, about an elderly man who teaches a daughter math. And finally, the story I particularly enjoyed, though it was heartbreaking was ‘Sister Machinery’, which is about a family trying to exist after the middle daughter’s death in a car accident. The speaker of the story understands the tension in their parents and sees her older sister grow apart from her. And it ends on a scene in which all three daughters are alive and they are teaching the youngest, the speaker, how to ride a bike. It's such a small moment, but it’s an insanely powerful and moving one.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang is a collection of poems heavily influenced by the poet W.S. Merwin and written in varying forms of wakas. The poems are about grieving Chang’s mother and father, about how the environment and animals interact with grief, and what it means to exist within loss. The poems I was particularly drawn to were ‘Losing a Language’, ‘Passing’, ‘No One’, ‘The Sound of the light’, ‘In the Open’, ‘What Can We Call It’, ‘The Lovers’, ‘In the Doorway’, and the last few stanzas of ‘Love Letters’. It ends with the beautiful lines, “Let me tell you a story/about hope: it always starts/and ends with bird.”
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty is a collection of stories about a single narrator, Daniel, going through his life on a Maine reservation. Each story is strange in a compelling way, showing what life for Daniel is after so much tragedy and pain. There are moments of him and his friend trying to rob a tribal museum, another of his grandmother believing him to be her brother and reprimanding him for smoking cigarettes, another of him visiting his mother in a mental hospital, another of him describing how his nephew died in his arms. These stories ache, and I was particularly drawn to ‘Food for the Common Cold’, ‘The Blessing Tobacco’, ‘Earth, Speak’, ‘Night of the Living Rez’, and ‘The Name Means Thunder’.
 
I loved in ‘Night of the Living Rez’, Talty introduced the idea of zombies in the beginning and expanded its meaning in the end. I also enjoyed how there were little details that weaved in and out of each story, things such as the pills and the boy’s gravestone. The last two stories in the collection really changed the meaning and context of the rest of the pieces, particularly how Frick, the mother’s boyfriend, is understood. He’s built up as a man that is generally nice to Daniel, though always drunk, but when Daniel walks in on Frick trying to sexually assault his sister, the character is shattered before our eyes. This same thing happened in the final story, where it described his sister, Paige, having a child and then child died, but it was unknown on why. It turned out Daniel was part to blame as well as his mother. These stories are heartfelt, raw, gravitating, and masterfully written. I’m excited to see what Talty does next.
 
Final Rating: 5/5