White Dancing Elephants
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Kirkus Best Books of 2018
"Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor."
-Lauren Groff, author of Florida
"Stunning, evocative, electric...an exuberant collection."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha’s birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange “rescue” mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. A boy seeks memories of his sister in the legend of a woman who weds death. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable.
In sixteen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color—cunning, bold, and resolute—facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other. Winner of the 2017 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, White Dancing Elephants marks the emergence of a new and original voice in fiction and explores feminist, queer, religious, and immigrant stories with precision, drama, and compassion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bhuvaneswar tackles the intricate interactions of race, class, and sexuality in this enticing debut. Each narrator is drawn into conflict with a character from an opposing segment of society: a South Asian professor conducts an affair with the white husband of her terminally ill, Korean-American friend in "Talinda"; a black psychoanalyst's feelings for her "slovenly" Indian patient alternate between lust and "revulsion" in "A Shaken Chair"; and a scholarship student is raped by a WASPy classmate after he helps her cheat on an exam in "Orange Popsicles." The political charge of each relationship is reinforced by Bhuvaneswar's articulation of the simmering drama created by them. Even as her narrators vary in status and perspective, many share the "hunger to have a child," an instinct Bhuvaneswar describes as "primordial." This "baby hunger" proves a source of tremendous anxiety for her characters, as exemplified in the collection's title story, in which a young woman addresses her miscarriage: "Just two clear stains, understated, as quiet and undemanding as your whole life had been; only enough blood for me to know." Though a few stories don't feel as developed as others, the collection is sharp and provocative, and Bhuvaneswar's voice rings true.
