Being Different

Often the best thing about short-story collections is how they introduce you to authors you might otherwise miss. American Eyes: New Asian-American Short Stories for Young Adults, edited by Lori M. Carlson (Edge Books / Henry Holt: $14.95) is no exception--it’ll surely set readers on an eager hunt for longer fiction by Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata (author of the novels “The Floating World” and “In the Heart of the Valley of Love”) and San Francisco’s Fae Myenne Ng (who wrote a novel called “Bone” about growing up Chinese-American).

Which isn’t to say that these short stories don’t stand on their own--especially Nguyen Duc Minh’s “Fortune Tellers,” about a teen-age Vietnamese boy’s ill-fated first crush, or the excerpt from Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s novel, “Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers,” in which a (white) teacher makes a futile and hilarious attempt at dissuading one of his Hawaiian students from using pidgin English. He means well, of course, but even students who’d like to cooperate--including the story’s narrator, Lovey--end up feeling worse about themselves:

“I don’t tell anyone . . . how ashamed I am of pidgin English. Ashamed of my mother and father, the food we eat, chicken luau with can spinach and tripe stew. . . . And my grandma. Her whole house smells like mothballs, not just in the closets but all over. And her pots look a million years old with dents all over. Grandma must know every recipe with mustard cabbage in it. She can quote from the Bible for everything bad you do. Walks everywhere, she goes downtown Kaunakakai, sucks fish eyes, and eats the parsley from our plates at Midnight Inn.” All the stories ring true about the joys and--more often, it seems, torments--of being “different” from the mainstream by virtue of how recently you or your parents “came over” from another country. You close this wonderfully multicultural book with a deeper appreciation for the struggles of immigrants and also for the special qualities and traditions they or their parents carry with them from their countries of origin.

First published in 1976, Joyce Rockwood’s exciting novel To Spoil the Sun (Owlet / Henry Holt: $7.95 paperback) is, happily, back in print. It tells much about life and culture of the 16th-Century Cherokees living in the southern Appalachian foothills, while focusing on one gifted young heroine named Rain Dove. After an idyllic girlhood followed by two eventful marriages--one to an elderly tribal shaman and another to a youthful warrior--Rain Dove sees her village devastated by the smallpox plague spread by white explorers. Rockwood’s story provides a fascinating glimpse into a hidden part of American history.

Deliver Us From Evie, by M. E. Kerr (HarperCollins: $15; ages 12 and up) is the latest novel from the prolific author of such notable books as “Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack” and “I’ll Love You When You Are More Like Me.” Often her books feature characters who are off-center, from slightly to radically on the fringe of the action around them. The new novel, told through teen-age farm boy Parr Burrman’s eyes, is no exception. Parr’s older sister, Evie--a farmhand extraordinaire who stubbornly refuses to wear makeup or girlish clothes--falls for rich farmer’s daughter, Patsy Duff. Their scandalous affair causes no end of awesome consequences in the small, conservative Missouri town where they live. It ends only when the pair skip town, leaving Parr to decide whether he will farm the land as his dad did before him, or whether he, too, will reach for a very different kind of life.