Fiction. The tales of Bluestein's book unfold as the small fictional South Asian country of Ayama Na recovers from war and prepares for its inevitable Westernization. "In the tradition of Robert Olen Butler and Bob Shacochis," writes Marly Swick, O. Henry Award winner who selected this book for the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, "Bluestein is a writer who illuminates our cultural differences, while exploring the intricacies of the human condition." Publishers Weekly writes, "Bluestein brings a versatile, captivating voice to her debut story collection set in the fictional Asian country of Ayama Na." Booklist calls Bluestein "a writer to watch." Bluestein's Ayama Na may be a fictional place, but the characters, their struggles, their cruelty and their hearts are authentic.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Editor and educator Bluestein brings a versatile, captivating voice to her debut story collection set in the fictional Asian country of Ayama Na, a tiny nation recovering from a violent coup and just developing a global identity (i.e., ambivalently welcoming Western influences). In The Artist's Story, an American businessman travels to Ayama Na's capital to retrieve his girlfriend's schizophrenic brother, only to be met with opposition from the man's caretaker, a one-legged prostitute. Skin Deep digs into the conflicted psyche of a Miss Ayama Na contestant whose education has been put on hold to compete in the pageant. From the robot-smitten factory worker in Aibo, or Love at First Sight to the saintly tour guide in The Blanks whose virtue is sorely challenged by tourists from Hell, Bluestein explores with affection and a wicked sense of humor the excesses and arrogance of American culture amid a nation so much older, wiser, and sadder than theirs. Though the allegorical overtones can be initially off-putting, the intricacy of Bluestein's imagination will quickly draw readers in. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In this award-winning debut story collection, Bluestein invents a war-torn Southeast Asian country, Ayama Na, and its capital, Pin Dalie. While the fates of Ayama Na’s inhabitants range from triumph to tragedy, redemption, and acceptance, their yearnings converge around the search for something more. In Aibo or Love at First Sight, Dali-Roo, a farmer forced into factory work after a devastating drought, risks his family’s well-being by stealing factory parts to build a robot pet. In The Artist’s Story, Alan, an American, travels to Pin Dalie to save his girlfriend’s starving-artist brother, Peter, and meets seemingly insane Peter’s girlfriend, a one-legged whore, who upends all his assumptions and makes him think perhaps he’s the one who needs to be saved. The development and resolution of her characters’ curious plights often feel rushed, and their motivations remain unclear, but readers will appreciate Bluestein’s originality and the simplicity of her style. The universality with which she approaches human suffering and desire, regardless of race, culture, or place, makes Bluestein a writer to watch. --Heather Dewar
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At once tragic and hilarious, but always thought-provoking!,
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This review is from: Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales (Perfect Paperback)
I was lucky enough to get a copy of these short stories before they were released to the public. All I can say is: Wow! While set in the exotic land of Ayama Na, they reveal the joys and frustrations all citizens of the world endure. Just when I thought the true-to-life heartache would devastate me, the story would turn to something hilarious, but just as true-to-life! So many cogent insights into the human condition ended up giving me great energy and peace to start my work week. (Yes I read the whole book in a weekend. Couldn't put it down.) Bluestein surely will be recognized as one of the best new voices of the year.
4.0 out of 5 stars
1001 Nights of Ayama Na,
This review is from: Tea &_Other Ayama Na Tales (2008 publication) (Paperback)
This beautifully written collection contains characters that are at once exotic and familiar, greedy and compassionate, driven and ambivalent -- the jealous sister whose angry vengeance splashes back onto her, the tour guide who struggles between his desire to be gracious and his contempt for foreigners, the daughter who must accept her father's choice for her marriage partner or defy him and leave her family forever. Woven between them are other, wiser figures whose compassion struggles upstream against a flood of blind ambition, envy, and pettiness. Through it all is the kind of magic you might find in a story from the Arabian Nights or the Brothers Grimm, a sense of adventure and passion, of the wondrous rewards and painful consequences that erupt even from the most mundane of lives ... NOTE TO AUTHOR: please write a sequel that stars the mysterious and wise Kol, as he intercedes gently into the lives of those around him -- a Cambodian version of "No. 1 Ladies'" Mma Ramotswe, perhaps.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Jump Into a New Country,
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This review is from: Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales (Perfect Paperback)
Bluestein's short stories in Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales read like morality plays in which flawed characters struggle with what actions will lead them on the right path and bring about justice. From the McDonald's worker, Mahala, who wants to set things right for her friend, co-worker, and fellow student, Raylee, to Dali-Roo, a down-on-his-luck farmer working at a Sony factory to make ends meet, Bluestein uses scene breaks to build tension and quicken the pace for some of her more ambitious story lines. She also does an excellent job of weaving in details of her fictional South Asian location, Ayama Na, including the setting, the language, and Asian mysticism.
Readers will enjoy many of the stories in this volume, including "Skin Deep," in which a university student, Song, enters a beauty pageant and takes a year off from school. She has no talents to speak of, but eventually writes and recites three poems before the local judges and wins the competition. Once at the nationals, she concludes she needs a more dazzling talent and embarks upon a journey. She becomes an amateur ventriloquist. The scenes between Song and her mother are wrought with tension because Song is not fulfilling her destiny, and her automaton, Lulu, agrees. The final scene of this story drives the moral home and--like many of the other stories in this book--with a bang. Each of these stories highlights the struggles facing the people of Ayama Na, which may mirror the struggles of many emerging nations today, as they strive to hold onto their traditions in the face of modernization and globalization. In many cases the modern world is juxtaposed with the cultural norms of this fictional society, and almost all of the characters are faced with a moral dilemma. From the surprise endings in "Skin Deep" and "Pineapple Wars" to quieter changes in character in "The Artist's Story," Bluestein is a gifted storyteller who will have readers examining their own lives and learning how to integrate their own cultural roots into their modern lives. These stories also help us examine larger societal issues, like providing aid to devastated nations and cities like New Orleans and China and providing assistance to developing nations. Bluestein's short story collection showcases her talents, and the book will provide fodder for book club discussion.
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