The Loom, and Other Stories [Paperback]

R.A. Sasaki (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Graywolf Press; Second Printing edition (January 1, 1991)
• ASIN: B0028GICBS
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars beautiful, lilting prose, May 3, 2003

By 

chloe (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Loom and Other Stories (Graywolf Short Fiction Series) (Paperback)

I picked this book up as an afterthought in a coffee shop while waiting for some tea. I'm glad that I did. I read the stories quickly, and I will read them again more slowly the next time, and then probably will return again. Some short stories are delicious for their intricate little plots. These stories lift the veil from a life, or rather, a kind of life, and let us see a world for a little while, although we are never allowed entirely to enter. This hovering on the threshold is what will bring me back to these stories; Sasaki has created a place that I would like to pass through again, as in a train, peering through the windows at a world both near and far.

The world of this book is one both familiar to me and strange. I have lived in San Francisco, but in a different dimension than the one of which Sasaki writes. How unexpected to discover the streets I knew again through different eyes. San Francisco is not a big city; it is a town, but one which folds on itself, and contains a great deal more history than is first apparent. Sasaki has revealed some of this history to me, and for that I am grateful.

Sasaki's stories are quiet creatures that like to linger. I hope that others will choose to let them in.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful words, February 5, 2002

By 

reader "reader" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Loom and Other Stories (Graywolf Short Fiction Series) (Paperback)

The Loom and Other Stories was an excellent work of fiction that departs from traditional portrayals of Asian American mother-daughter relationship by portraying both the mothers and daughters with dignity and intellectual assertiveness. Sasaki creates a world where strong characters free themselves from their past in order to find potential in their futures. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is Sasaki's ability to jump between generations--some stories focus on third generation daughters of women who endured the internment camps, while others focus on the second generation women who endured the camps themselves. Both groups maintain their dignities as human beings.

My only criticism was that it would have been nice to learn more about the Terasaki family that Sasaki describes in her first four stories. The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight stories are not related to the first four, and as a reader I felt a bit unsatiated when Sasaki decided to leve the Terasakis in order to write about other families.

At the same time, there is no denying that this is one of the finer works of fiction describing the Asian American experience, and for that it deserves five stars.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lovely writing, with an acute ethnic sense, January 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Loom and Other Stories (Graywolf Short Fiction Series) (Paperback)

This is a collection of stories by a fine writer who comes up with various ways to tell the same story over and over--the experience of being Japanese-American. Funny, in a way, because Sasaki (according to the endpaper in the book) is sansei, or third-generation American. But she is acutely aware of her background.
The best story in this book is "First Love," which is basically an epiphany. It has a New-Yorker-story finish that just sort of trails off......but is nicely done up to that point