Where the Long Grass Bends: Stories — Neela Vaswani

Short fiction that leaps across borders and boundaries: “Fierce and bold . . . beautiful” (Sena Jeter Naslund).
 
In whirling, catch-me-if-you-can prose, Where the Long Grass Bends tells stories that subvert conventional narrative by employing Indian lore, Gaelic fable, and historical legend. Spare, fierce, and unpredictable, these tales from an American Book Award winner “play with the notion of culture and homeland from a variety of perpectives” (Kirkus Reviews).
 
“Vaswani shows impressive range and a striking command of poetic imagery in this debut collection, which features 13 stories dealing mostly with the Indian and Asian immigrant experience. ‘Sita and Mrs. Durber' describes a British art teacher's struggles to deal with a formidably talented Malaysian kindergartener, whose brilliant drawings reveal uncomfortable truths. ‘Five Objects in Queens,' in which an Indian family uses familiar references from their homeland to help them acclimate to life in New York, falls closer to the terrain carved out by writers like Bharati Mukherjee.” -- Publishers Weekly