BABA: A Return to China Upon My...

BABA: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders by Belle Yang (Harcourt Brace: $18.; 211 pp.). In this warm collection of stories about her father’s Manchurian family, Yang sets an enchanted tone with her opening phrase: “In a time when the world was a bit wider, during a season when the sorghum was tinged with red. . . .” Her portraits of village life prior to the communist takeover recall the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Solid citizens, industrious peasants and colorful eccentrics enact the grand comedies and tragedies of life on a miniature stage. Yang expands her father’s reminiscences into charming stories, some with morals, others merely reflecting the bittersweet texture of a vanished way of life.