Publisher's Synopsis
Krystal Hut: Stories joins the growing body of ethnic literature that has found a niche in the hearts of American readers. In this debut collection of ten richly imagined stories, we meet a contingent of Filipino-Americans, an immigrant group that shares deep emotional and historical ties with its adopted country. The stories take us from Hawaii to California and the East Coast, tracing with vivid details and compassion the emotional journeys of her characters in their quest for love, selfhood, and the American dream, even as they speak to the pilgrim in all of us. Achara poignantly dramatizes the strain of living in two cultures, comparing it to the 'delicate push and pull between the sugar and the vinegar' in the grandmother's relish recipe. In an award-winning story, Dust Storm, a bewildered Filipino youth, in the grips of a Thanksgiving Day family tragedy, asks: 'why do we have to celebrate Thanksgiving... it's not even our holiday?' In the title story, a Filipino widower's longing and search for an ideal wife from the old country collide the cruel realities of modern-day immigration. Written in understated prose and rich in irony, sensuous details, and humor, the book showcases the Philippine-born author's prize-winning and previously published short stories.
