Yellow: Stories Book

The linked stories in this short story collection are set in the fictional NoCal coastal town of Rosarita Bay and focus on the everyday lives of Asian American protagonists. Though the characters come from specific cultural experiences and orientations, they are eminently relatable, psychologically rich and complex in their fears, emotions, and desires as they engage and interact in a predominantly liberal white community. The characters are varied and textured in their backgrounds - a surfer/owner of a sushi restaurant, an attorney, a master woodworker, an operator of a boat touring company, contemporary poets, a school teacher.

My favorite story in the collection is probably "Casual Water" - a tale about two adolescent hapa brothers, who are abandoned first by their homesick mother, who returns to the Phillipines to take care of a sick relative and never returns to her sons, and later by their white father who aspires to tour the professional golf circuit and bails on raising his children - all on the cusp of the older brother's departure to college. A story of family fractured, absentee parents, sacrifice, grief and loss. Other stories in the collection are similarly provocative in their exploration of familial and romantic relationships and highlighting the inner worlds of solitary, introspective characters navigating opening the heart to let in human connection.