stands as a landmark of American multicultural short fiction. Lysley Tenorio’s tales are framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies: tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, pop culture and high culture, the American and the Filipino. Tenorio balances these opposites with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, exploring universal themes—the sometimes-suffocating ties of family, the melancholy of isolation, the need to find connections—with uncommon empathy and breathtaking originality.