PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017 by Yuka Igarashi

PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017 Reviews

• 
  Jen

  Very sad story. Kind of made me think of me. Only I don't pickle my memories, they just kind of are Etch-A-Sketch. Shake my head and they're gone!
  
  Again, read beautifully by Levar Burton. 4 stars.
• 
  Emad

  داستان‌ها خیلی نتوانستند مرا به خود جذب کنند. روایت‌هایی نه‌چندان دل‌چسب که به نظر می‌رسد با نگاهی بسیار جنسیّت‌زده، سیاسی و حتّی نژادپرستانه برگزیده شده‌اند. چیزی که دربارۀ جوایزی چون اسکار نیز زیاد به گوش می‌خورد. صِرف این‌که داستان به موضوع زنان، سیاه‌پوستان و یا مهاجران پرداخته باشد برای این‌که واقعاً داستان خوبی هم باشد، کفایت نمی‌کند. با این حال سلوک انجمن قلم آمریکا (حدّاقل در آن سال) این نگاه جنسیّت‌زدۀ به‌اصطلاح فمینیستی، نگاه ترحّم‌بار به مهاجران و سیاه‌پوستان از طرف داوران و منتقدان انجمن و در رأس تمام آن‌ها نگاه از بالای آمریکا و آمریکاییان به دیگر مردم دنیا را به‌وضوح نشان می‌دهد. انتخاب‌ها به‌قدری از این لحاظ برایم زننده بودند که حالاحالاها قصد خواندن دوره‌های دیگر برگزیدگان این انجمن را نخواهم داشت. با همۀ این‌ها، داستان «تیمارگر» نوشتۀ امبر کارون و بعد از آن تا حدودی داستان «حقایق ایالت‌ها برای دورانی جدید» نوشتۀ امی ساوبر از میان داستان‌های دیگر مجموعه داستان‌های خوب و قابل‌قبولی بودند.
  
  امّا ترجمۀ کار هم به نظرم ترجمۀ قابل‌قبولی از آب درنیامده است. خصوصاً آن که برگردان متن اصلی داستان‌ها را نیز به زبان گفتاری و عامیانه آورده و این علاوه بر غیرعرف بودن، به دریافت روان داستان از طرف مخاطب لطمه‌های گاه جدّی می‌زند.
• 
  Magen

  Have you met someone who says, "I have a bad memory and it's due to trauma?" Do you want to understand what they mean? Then this is the story for you. I have never been able to fully articulate how I have memories, but they're not easily accessible as well as this story does. There are no trigger warnings as it does not deal with the specific reasons the main character chooses to lock up her memories, but it is an accurate description for how memories are stored for some people who have experienced persistent trauma, neglect, or other deprivation.
  
  Even if you aren't particularly interested in understanding how memories are stored, this is an incredibly well-done story, especially if you listen to the LeVar Reads Podcast version. I highly recommend this story to everyone.
• 
  Luke McNamara

  Some good short stories in here. It was never dull and I enjoyed them all.
• 
  Guttu

  This is bad. I picked up this book going by the title. It has "America's best stories" in it. So I thought it will at least turn out to be an easy read. But when I finished the book, I was so disappointed that I picked up a book for it's title. I will never do it again...
  
  There are twelve short stories in this book of varying length. A couple of stories are around 2000 words. One common thing that binds all the stories is the unsatisfactory ending. It is all left to the readers wisdom and intellect to complete the story. This may have worked well in short film or movies but it fails when it comes to short stories.
  
  Despite this, I somewhat enjoyed reading two stories. The first one I liked was "State facts for the New Age by Amy Sauber". This story is about a geography teacher who suffers from heartbreak. She does try to work it out by visiting her shrink which eventually fails to have any healing effect on her. There is a strange relationship of hatred and love between her and the students. The story ends when her students beautifully to her anxiety attack in her class.
  
  The second one I liked was "Solee by Crystal Hana Kim". This story is about a teenage girl Solee who is entering into pubescent stage. It portrays her feelings towards her mother's friend who is too old to be her love. This may resurface some of your old childhood memories.
  
  I strongly feel this will be a waste of time for most of you. You may take the risk if you find familiar author's in the list.
• 
  Avie

  I "read" this story through the Levar Burton podcast. The premise is interesting however I found it a bit confusing to follow who the narrator was at times.
• 
  Jake

  After a particularly brutal week of rejections for my own stories (8 in 3 days), I came across this book at the library. Wanting to see what sort of stories were being, not only accepted, but awarded the title of "Best", i checked it out. It started strong and I immediately began to doubt my own abilities, but then it got worse, worse, and blander and blander. In the end, there were only two stories in here that i was really impressed by.
• 
  Hayley

  I picked this one up after hearing “1,000-Year-Old Ghosts” by Laura Chow Reeve read aloud on Levar Burton Reads - which, aside from being an impressive debut - absolutely shot to the top of my favorite short stories, period, for any year from any season of writer. Do not miss “Tell Me, Please” by Emily Chammah (a totally worthy lead-off batter to ensure you’re sick-free for the rest of the collection) and “The Asphodel Meadow” by Jim Cole; so weird and melodic, and maybe I need someone to decode why I liked it so much??? Verdict: there’s so much to look forward to that’s being dreamed up *right*now*
• 
  Vani

  Have you tried pickling vegetables? It's easy and a great way to preserve them, especially when they're wilting at the back of the refrigerator. But 1000-year-old ghosts subverts the idea of preservation. In this tale of memories, relationships, and traditions, the women use pickling as a way to remove their memories and deal with overwhelming sadness. As time goes by, they have jars of memories bottled away and they slowly dissolve like salt in water, until nothing remains...
  
  For me, memories, be they good or bad, sad and embarrassing, cringe-worthy and regretful, these are the things that make up our lives and experiences. Being human means embracing all these things and learning to live with some while thriving despite others. They can lift us up or destroy us, depending on the choices that we make and the power we give them.
• 
  Nancy

  1000-Year-Old Ghosts by Laura Chow Reeve is a bittersweet short story about how a family tried repressing memories to avoid pain, but the practice has long term consequences for the women. The story is told from the granddaughter's perspective, and she recounts how her grandmother taught her how to remove her bad memories and pickle them in jars. The Chinese grandmother and granddaughter share a kinship, while the mother disapproved of the practice, and soon you see why. By removing the bad memories, gaps are left and the entire memory becomes corrupted. The good memories left become hazy, with no corresponding bad memories to balance them. A coping mechanism started in one generation ends up affecting future generations, and you hope that the granddaughter will stop this practice and appreciate and cope with the life she is living now. This story was episode 9 of LeVar Burton Reads.
• 
  Ben

  Listened to LaVar Burton Reads.
  
  The pattern of stories that center on the shame felt by those who feel different - especially by immigrants - who then distance themselves from their history and 'who they are' to better fit in, is heartbreaking. We lose much by being intolerant of people who are different, and they lose opportunities to enrich or bring meaning to their existence. Why refuse to teach a child a language to 'guarantee that they will speak the local language'? Or hide away bad memories because they 'are too painful', while denying yourself the related good memories?
  
  Denial of memories as a method of dealing with the pain that comes from them is so sad. You might find you can't remember when you want to. Memories must be curated, not feared. We have lost our shaman and our tribal historians, or stopped listening to them. Everything in balance.
  
  I love the power of the short story, and this one is no different.
  
  This ties to an unrelated story related to #metoo I read today. You can not deny history, or erase it. But you must curate it and choose what to venerate and what to set to the side and not celebrate.
• 
  Fallon

  I LOVED this story. This is definitely my favorite story from Levar Burton Reads. Fascinating. Relevant. Beautifully written.
• 
  Chrysten Lofton

  4.5⭐ "It felt like being full and empty at the same time."
  ** Contains Spoilers**
  
  On this, the eigth installment (ninth episode) of Sticher podcast's
  LeVar Burton Reads , we're gifted with "1000-Year-Old Ghosts" by Laura Chow Reeve. This story is a commentary on repression, and honestly, it's so beautiful. I don't have a lot to say about it, except that it was so fluid and touching, it seemed just a few minutes long to me for some reason. I made myself listen again, just to take in the full emotional depth one more time.
  
  We meet a family with a strange coping habit. When they have memories they don't want the burden of carrying anymore, they slice them up like fruit and jar them in preservative. There are a lot of side effects to living this kind of life.
  
  The first side effect is a physical one, a general damage to short term memory, and over time, a deeper strain on memory akin to Alzheimer's. The second one is a little more subtle, and why the practice is so dangerous. It's addictive. The less one has to bear a painful memory, the less one can stand to hold one in their mind for more than a moment or two.
  
  The story features a root of immigration and cultural change. We meet three generations of women: A first generation grandmother from China, her daughter, and her daughter's daughter. All of them have a different connection to the motherland, all unique and complex, and well conveyed for such a short story. I really felt like this paradigm set the tone for memory to be the antagonist, because there isn't just the standard loss we may all cope with, but the loss and longing of leaving behind a home.
  
  The first generation grandfather has a presence in this story, but it is not his story--he's seen and explored through the eyes of these women, and what he meant to all of them, but his memory is corrupted, which really seals the dread of this harmful practice.
  
  This story is very tender. I listened to it twice, and physically read it the third time, because it's a kind of mosaic of broken memory and emotion. The pieces have to come together. I think there was something really personal for me in this story, I have issues with repression. It was so beautifully written, I just honestly needed to spend some time with it.
  Thanks for this one, LeVar.
  
  **Note** Read on the dates listed, in the year 2017 - back dated to exempt from the goodreads challenge
  
• 
  Cynthia

  **This review is only for 1000 Year Old Ghost, by Laura Chow Reeve; as listen to on LeVar Burton Reads podcast.**
  
  I love the idea of being able to bottle up memories to keep them and being able to open the jars and relive the memories.
  
  The tale raises a very good question of who gets to chose what we remember and how those memories are told. We would like to think they're our own, but so much of what we experience is based off of our past life, other's we're with at the time, our family and friends. Are any memories truly real and concrete? Why are only the traumatic ones remembered; why not the every day mundane aspects? Would we even want to relive some of the memories we bottled up? Isn't it best to let sleeping dogs lie?
  
  So many questions, from such a short story, only a half hour listen, via the podcast. Yet, it's impossible not to make memories.
  
  The real question is, are they worth clinging to or letting go?
• 
  Amy

  The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea* - or in this story, the pickling brine used to store painful memories. I like stories that take the concept of removing a piece of oneself and putting it aside; they always have bittersweet tinge to them, and this story is definitely bittersweet. This is also the second time a LeVar Burton Reads story kept causing my mind drift to Rick and Morty (Morty's Mind Blowers anyone?). It's also reminiscent of The Giver, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the pensieve in Harry Potter.
  
  *Paraphrased from Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen; it's unclear to me which name she was writing under, what the correct quote actually is, and which of her works it came from (I believe it's from one of the Seven Gothic tales).
• 
  Vaishali

  Quite "full" for a short story. Tremendous breadth and depth; layers interspersed with layers. Absolutely no joy anywhere in here, and if you are the ra-ra-empowered type, you may get impatient with the narrator's memory-packrat world. A marvelous retrieve comes in the final line: "We are drowning in all this salt water."
  
  Please catch LeVar Burton's podcast for his interesting read, special effects, and reflective commentary.
  
  
  .
• 
  Ace Boggess

  Some genuinely interesting stories in here. "The Handler" was a personal favorite.
  
  
• 
  Mason

  Short fiction is dope!
• 
  Spencer

  An amazing collection.
• 
  Kayla

  2.5 stars
• 
  Megan

  "Tell Me Please" by Emily Chammah ★★★★
  
  This story follows Amal, a young girl in Jordan who is very best friends with her cousin Omar. They write each other secret notes in English (when they only know a few words) and she falls in love with him. Unfortunately, it is improper for the two to spend any time alone together once Amal becomes "a woman" and they go several years without knowing or seeing each other. As an young adult in her parent's house, Amal finds Omar on Facebook. She starts a correspondence with him. She sees he has scanned and uploaded a photo of the two of them from childhood and used it as one of his profile pictures. Amal gets emboldened and pursues him with a mixture of reserve and rebellion. Chammah captures perfectly the nuance of desire and love that Amal has for Omar as she grows up as a conservative, innocent, and relatively shy woman.
  
  Goldenhawk ★★★
  
  2.5 stars rounded up. At Dinara's job, layoffs and firings have become rampant, but her narrow focus and hard work keeps her job. She adapts well to the needs of the company. But her coworkers suspect she is kept on as a "diversity hire" because she's a woman. Dinara keeps all information about herself close to the chest, even from the reader. One day Dinara joins the rest of the men she works with staring out the window at a hawk. Dinara suspects it is a "goldenhawk," like the street name close to her, because of its gold feathers. A coworker insists she is wrong; no such thing exists, he says, and it must be a red-tailed hawk. Dinara lets him believe he is right, but knows he is wrong. At the end of the day, she spies the goldenhawk's nest and knows she will keep its secret in the same way she keeps her own. The writing is good here, but because we know so little about Dinara and because so little happens, I feel it will not stick with me as long as some of the other stories in here. However, the more I have thought about it since reading it, the more I think I like it.
  
  1000-Year-Old Ghosts ★★★★★
  Katie is a young girl who learns from her Popo (grandmother) how to pickle memories so that she can forget. Their obsession over pickling all kinds of memories upsets Katie's mother, who insists that remembering is good even when it is painful. The narrative is interwoven with some of Popo's memories throughout her life that even she cannot truly remember now. This story is not only beautifully written, but captures the pain of remembering, the pain of forgetting, and the difficulty of straddling two different cultures. How do we remember our past, our homeland, ourselves, and not yearn for it?
  
  Edwin Chase of Nantucket by Ben Shattuck ★★★★★
  This was not a story I expected to like. When in the second paragraph I learned it was set in 1796 in Nantucket, I was like, "Uggggggh, this is so not my jam." But damn. Shattuck's writing style and his ability to make things beautiful, curious, and tender totally worked for me. At the end, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is a chapter from a novel Shattuck is working on. I'll definitely be reading it. One of the best most beautiful passages is when Edwin prepares dinner for his mother and the two mysterious guests:
  
  "Why is it that you do all the cooking here?" Will said.
  
  Because my father had started lining up his fingernail clippings on the mantel. Because he'd sometimes walk outside without his shoes. Because he'd leave me and Laurel alone for hours while he walked. I'd followed him a few times. Mostly he'd just go until he found a spot out of the wind, sit down, and do nothing, miss dinner. She, at first, had gone looking for him. but then, one night, she said to me when I returned from the saltworks, "I don't care what you eat, but I'm not cooking anymore." She put her mother's cookbook for me on the table. She might have a pickled beet for dinner. Or a boiled egg. A handful of nuts.
  
  So I started cooking. In Dad's long disappearances, I improved my recipes. Under the storms battering the house, cooking was the one thing I could control. Everything changes for the better with heat and time: onions go sweet with butter; potatoes soften. Of the raking, mucking, harrowing, it was the hours inside, out of the wind, in the kitchen, where I felt the weight lift away. Under our feet, in the cellar, with blocks of ice from the pond, I kept cheese, a bushel of quinces, apples, dried cherries, pears, a side of dried venison. Turnips and potatoes. And, depending on the season, I put berries into pies: gooseberries, strawberries, meal plums, cranberries, beach plums. When Laurel retreated to the bedroom early, I improved my dessert recipes. I made custards, cranberry tarts, ginger and treacle cakes, pound cakes, bread pudding, and hazelnut cake. I'd leave Dad a plate on the table for when he returned.
  
  "Because I like the warm kitchen," I said to Will then.
  
  A Message by Ruth Serven ★★
  This is a very short story that uses the second person. Usually I can get behind that, but it took me way too long to figure out who the actual narrator was (I think she's talking to her friend?) So the narrator doesn't really matter at all, but the narrator is helping a friend (or neighbor?) contact her father who is in Serbia. The story starts over and over with dialogue as someone (presumably the friend/neighbor) recounts the start of her own story, whether that was the parents meeting, the father getting stuck in Serbia with no money and passport, etc... Ultimately I spent too much time trying to figure out what was going on and with whom. It took me out of the story.
  
  The Handler ★★★★
  After a somewhat bitter break-up, a woman moves to Alaska to be a dog-handler for a man and his 13-year-old deaf daughter. He's training to be in the Itidarod, the daughter desperately wants to be his companion and resents the new handler for her place. The woman sends lovelorn letters to her ex repeatedly inviting him to come up and see the dogs. After some hardships and tragedy, the woman realizes she is happy here, and is glad to have kept it from her ex so it is hers alone to enjoy.
  
  The Manual Alphabet ★★
  
  State Facts for the New Age ★★★1/2
  
  The Asphodel Meadow ★★★
  
  A Modern Marriage ★★★1/2
• 
  Cori

  LeVar Burton Reads episode 9
  There's the important fantasy element of pickling memories, but the story also touches on being torn between two worlds. For the grandmother it's literally China and the US. For Katie, both worlds are in the US, but the cultures are still difficult to bridge. As an Asian American I recognized some of the painful comments made toward her.
  Deciding how to deal with painful memories is a difficult balance. We do need to learn from our mistakes and if we forget, how will we learn? But wouldn't it be so much easier to pickle an especially traumatic memory so we could move past them more easily? Who are we if we don't remember our past? This thread also edges toward senility and Alzheimer's. They're not specifically addressed, but the undercurrent is there.
  I think I prefer my stories to have clear morals rather than making me think too deeply about the meaning and who I am... This certainly does provoke a lot of questions.
• 
  Aarti Shenoy

  A story about pain, and how we deal with it. How someone who has been dealt too much of it chooses to excise the painful memories and pickle them like vegetables, rather than have to confront the memories over and over. A story about how being an immigrant is a little like dying, and being born again and having to learn how to live all over again. A story about the way traditions filter down through generations and change flavour with every new generation. I have gone back to this story, masterfully crafted by Laura Chow Reeve, and beautifully narrated by LeVar Burton in his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads. I have gone back to this story time and time again, and found something new that hooks into my heart each time. And I know I will continue to go back to it every time I want an expression for my desire to forget certain painful memories. This is the gateway to that other side.
• 
  Pearse Anderson

  I really tried to take my mind off news and work and read some random book this week, and it was this collection. It was fine, I did not enjoy the stories as much as I had hoped, so I am giving it a 7/10. The design was great, the intros from each lit mag editor were helpful, and overall this was a short, quick read. My favorites were Amber Caron's "The Handler," Amy Sauber's "State Facts for the New Age," which felt bordering on melodrama/satire, "Edwin Chase of Nantucket" by Ben Shattuck, and I guess that's it. I dunno, I wish I would've liked the others like 20% more than I did. Happy they were from so many interesting backgrounds and settings, though it all sort of became about hidden loves! So many hidden loves in these stories! Curious what the 2018 collection will include, I'm excited for Kleeman's judging process.
• 
  Sid

  I found this collection of short stories on IndieBound.org. There are some beautiful stories, including the girl from the Middle East who finds herself, the wilderness of Alaska shown through the eyes of the sled dogs and the coming of age story of the girl from Korea. All these stories seem to have a couple tropes in common, either a person's journey (physical or psychological) or a visitor to a new environment and how they adjust. The Pen series is worth a visit, as it gives us a glimpse of the up and comers in writing.
• 
  Blue

  Listened via LeVar Burton Reads podcast. (#9)
  
  This one is heavy. Usually I like dystopian themes and philosophy more, but this might have been too close to the edge for people not used to them to try it out. An interesting parallel I found was that even with this ability, it seems the best preserved memories often hurt the most. As a forgetful person, quickly fading memories and the ability to wait long enough to read a book or watch a movie for almost the first time the second time, I can see the temptation and the harm.
• 
  Ellen

  Most of the stories in this collection left me wanting a little more of them, but I'm excited by the idea of the collection and the diversity of voices represented. Laura Chow Reeve's "1000-Year-Old Ghosts" is a stunner and I think worth the price of admission. Emily Chammah's "Tell Me, Please" didn't quite deliver (for me, anyway) but the characters stuck with me. Definitely looking forward to the 2018 edition.
• 
  D.

  It took me forever to finish this because i kept swapping back and forth , but i genuinely enjoyed a number of the stories . My favorites were "1000-year-old-ghosts" and "Solee"." I usually read books like this because its a good way for me to find writers and new styles and maybe even pick up a lit mag whose style i tend to gravitate more to based on the writers theyve published. Id read the next edition that comes out.