by Ken Liu
First published 2016
A young boy watches his Chinese mother fold paper into tigers, buffalo, and other creatures that come alive in his hands. She speaks to them in Chinese, telling stories he doesn't understand. As he grows older in their Connecticut suburb, he abandons the paper animals, embarrassed by his mother's broken English and foreign ways. Years later, after his mother's death, he unfolds one of her creations and discovers a letter written in Chinese characters across the paper. The message reveals the depth of her love and the stories she tried to share. This collection includes fourteen other tales that follow immigrants, war survivors, and families navigating technology's promises and failures. A daughter loses her father to the augmented reality he invented to connect them. A man preserves cultural memory as his civilization faces extinction. A couple investigates forgotten wartime atrocities. Each story explores how love persists across cultural divides, technological barriers, and the weight of history.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, science-fiction, literary-fiction, anthologies, speculative-fiction
Vibes: bittersweet, intimate, lyrical, melancholic, poignant, thought-provoking
Tropes: cultural-divide, epistolary-elements, found-family, generational-conflict, love-across-barriers
Setting: Connecticut, China
Period: 21st-century
450 pages · Paperback · Saga Press
Content warnings: death, war