FICTION

THE LOOM AND OTHER STORIES by R. A. Sasaki (Graywolf Press: $10; 112 pp.) . Sasaki is a sansei , a third-generation Japanese-American. She writes about growing up in San Francisco, about the experience of never quite belonging, and about family life in a culture within a culture. “The Loom” examines a mother whose values are dominated by what “they” say and what “they” do. She seems so embedded in a world of others’ opinions that she doesn’t even cry when her daughter dies. Yet this self-effacing woman dominates her family by being the thread that connects the lives of the others, sometimes invisibly. In “First Love,” a college-bound girl and an immigrant F.O.B. (fresh off the boat) boy fall in love. Both her initial attraction to him and her eventual embarrassment about him are painfully real. Sometimes Sasaki explains her characters to exhaustion, but when the characters and their situations develop naturally, her stories are delightful.