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rachaelbrady's review
5.0
Fascinating. I don’t always read short stories and this was such a good way to dive in. I adored some of them, others made me think for hours, and some were not my cup of tea. Nevertheless this collection was perfect for long T rides.
tinamayreads's review
4.0
I finished reading BEST DEBUT SHORT STORIES 2022: The Pen America Dau Prize edited by Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers this past weekend. The prize was judged by Sabrina Orah Mark, Emily Nemens and Deesha Philyaw. I love short stories so I was really excited to read this book full of debut writers. I loved these stories! I loved how before each story there’s an editor’s note from the editor who first published the story. There’s great range in these stories that travel around the world and such a wide array of distinct characters. The writing in every story is fantastic and I really enjoyed reading this whole book! My fave stories are Writing With Blood by Catherine Bai which is about a Chinese American girl and The Chicken by RZ Baschir which has that weird edge that I love. I can’t wait to read the 2023 edition next year!
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Thank you to Catapult for my gifted review copy!
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Thank you to Catapult for my gifted review copy!
nini23's review
adventurous
challenging
reflective
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
The editors Yuka Igarashi and Sarah Lyn Rogers start their introduction by mentioning the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once to discuss the prevalence of multiverses in popular culture and its understandable allure in the present chaotic times we live in. I read last year's (2021) Dau Prize finalists, was quite impressed and this year's batch also makes me want to check out the planned novels of some of these debut writers. The range of these selected short stories, previously published in various journals and literary magazines, is expectedly quite broad.
The ones that wowed me are:
A Wedding in Multan, 1978 by Yasmeen Adele Majeed
The Cacophobe by Seth Wang
Sacrilege by Edward Salem
The Black Kite and The Wind by Erin Connal
Worthy mention: Work Wives by Preeti Vangani
Before each short story is a note by the editor of the journal the story was originally published in but I would suggest reading the short story first and the commentary after to avoid being unduly influenced by it. Similarly, the overview intro by the two editors of this anthology may blunt some of the impact of certain stories, I personally think it's best to approach them without preconceived notions or information on the subject matter.
Some of the short stories are simply not to my taste eg. climate dystopia (which we are already facing), child narrators or second person narrative.
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