A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection Book

A diverse collection of lively tales of multicultural encounters.

Christina Bauer - Library Journal

The founding editor of Other Voices Books, Bierlein has compiled 30 stories about the experiences of travelers and immigrants with unfamiliar people in foreign lands. The authors included-ranging from Nathan Englander and Josip Novakovich to Luis Alfaro and Amanda Eyre Ward-come from countries like Zimbabwe, Morocco, Israel, Bangladesh, India, Croatia, Nepal, as well as the United States and Canada; many have won various awards and garnered fame in their homelands. Some are being published in America for the first time. Overall, their stories are engaging, moving, and well written. "The Professor's Office," for example, tells the story of Mrs. Kanh, a Vietnamese immigrant who lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles and watches her husband fall victim to Alzheimer's. "Motherhood and Terrorism" delves into the daily lives of oil wives living in war-torn areas of the Middle East who escape their fears by having children and buying expensive things. "Bhakthi in the Water" is about a middle-aged Indian woman in the United States who gets over her divorce and the death of her mother as she overcomes her fear of water. Recommended for comprehensive short fiction collections.

CORRECTION:In the review of Michele Gorman's Getting Graphic! Comics for Kids(LJ3/15/08), we mistakenly listed Thomson Gale as the distributor of Linworth. Linworth ships most of its books directly.