Jen Gish

Featuring guest editor contributions by the author of "Less," the latest edition of the respected literary annual collects twenty top-selected short stories from the previous year.

"A personal, provocative, informative, and entertaining study of the different idea Asians and Westerners have of the self and how this plays out in our differing approaches to art, learning, politics, business, and almost everything else"--

"In her first collection of stories since the acclaimed Who's Irish?, the beloved author of The Resisters refracts the fifty years since the opening of China through the lives of ordinary people. Beginning with a cheery, kindly letter penned by a Chinese girl in heaven to "poor Mr. Nixon" in hell, Gish Jen embarks on an eleven-story journey through U.S.-Chinese relations, capturing not only the excitement of a world on the brink of tectonic change,...

The time: not so long from now. The place: AutoAmerica. The land: half under water. The Internet: one part artificial intelligence, one part surveillance technology, and oddly human--even funny. The people: Divided. The angel-fair "Netted" have jobs, and literally occupy the high ground. The "Surplus" live on swampland if they're lucky, on water if they're not. The story: To a Surplus couple--he once a professor, she still a lawyer--is born a Blasian...