A luminous collection of heartbreaking, startling, and gloriously unique
stories set amongst the Filipino communities of California and the Philippines—now
with a new preface by the author
Monstress stands as a landmark of American multicultural
short fiction. Lysley Tenorio’s tales are framed by tense, fascinating
dichotomies: tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, pop
culture and high culture, the American and the Filipino. Tenorio balances these
opposites with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, exploring universal
themes—the sometimes-suffocating ties of family, the melancholy of isolation,
the need to find connections—with uncommon empathy and breathtaking
originality.
