A Classic Case of Us Vs. Them
A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection
edited by Stacy Bierlein (OV Books)
It’s a vast world, but editor Stacy Bierlein crammed the whole thing into A Stranger Among Us, despite her modest apology for “cultures and settings that may not be represented.” Pish. This anthology of international fiction explodes with unexpected combinations of place, ethnicity, and nationality—and it’s no mistake that collision precedes connection in the subtitle.

The 30 contributors possess varied backgrounds and a common fascination with the frustrations and faux pas of cross-cultural dialogue. In “Shoes,” Etgar Keret paints the chilling equivocations of nascent ethnic pride, portraying a boy who comes to believe that his German-made sneakers contain the flesh of relatives killed in the Holocaust—then pities his mother’s ignorance of this fact. In “The Naked Circus,” G.K. Wuori describes the dystopian passage of a mysterious mail-order bride sent to live with a dying American woman, whereupon the visitor miraculously absorbs the beloved wife’s identity prior to her passing. Fiction, here, is well suited to the task of telling truths: Unfettered by factual accuracy, the dreamlike and disconcerting scenarios cast cultural realities in sharp relief.

Ultimately, though, we can’t help but be limited by our perspective. As Ana Menendez prods in “In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd”: “Antonio laughed . . . but he was careful not to laugh too hard. . . . He and Carlos were Dominican, not Cuban, and they ate their same foods and played their same games, but Antonio knew they still didn’t understand all the layers of hurt in the Cuban’s jokes.” —Julie Hanus

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
by Dan Kennedy (Algonquin)
The mainstream music industry is an easy target these days, wracked not just by the old mediocrity but also by diving sales and deep layoffs as the assault of the MP3s continues. So Rock On, Dan Kennedy’s account of working at Atlantic Records as the bottom fell out, could be construed as piling on if Kennedy weren’t so damn funny and, despite a good-sized ego, occasionally self-deprecating and even sweetly human as he describes his time inside the belly of the corporate beast. (You’d better be self-deprecating if you’re writing print ads for Phil Collins and creating TV spots for Jewel.) A McSweeneys.net contributor and spoken-word performer with a laserlike wit, Kennedy deploys his considerable snark with deadly precision. —Keith Goetzman