Her fiction favors the quotidian over the spectacular, the small moments of violence or disappointment common to all ... The book is slender, containing only eight stories, but it might also be considered capacious, hard to reduce to a single theme or preoccupation. Chai’s style, the sole element that holds these distinct works together, is unaffected. It’s as if the author is getting out of her own way, giving herself space to focus on the mechanics of one individual narrative at a time. Yet in each there’s a sense of many other narratives just off the page, the lives and back stories we aren’t seeing. Short stories are by definition brief, but they needn’t be small ... Chai’s skill gleams ... You may call it conventional, even, with its attention to plot and character, but Chai’s adherence to those conventions just underscores how perfect a literary form the short story can be.
The eight stories in this collection feature varied characters in different states of diaspora each with their own powerful voice ... With a vision that is both sharp and compassionate, Chai allows us to see just what it is to be 'different' in a world that embraces conformity ... Chai is masterful here at interweaving American suburban life and Chinese-American specificities ... a significant piece of art reminiscent of Madison Smartt Bell's brilliant novella The Year of Silence ... Chai is a masterful writer and this collection presents a deeply moving portrait of the varieties of Chinese diasporic experience.
...slim yet powerful ... immersive and complex ... The sign of a strong collection is one where the stories work together to inform the reader, and Chai’s eight tales do just that.
As the world becomes increasingly global, this material proves ever-relevant. Chai's prose is often unadorned, but occasionally startlingly lovely ... Even unnamed characters prove memorable long after their brief appearances ... These evocative stories are variously funny, surprising, gloomy and heartening, ultimately about a universal human experience, of immigration and beyond.
May-lee Chai’s Useful Phrases for Immigrants is distinguished by writing as elegant and delicate as a snowflake ... its ghost-story narrative proves that Chai is as adept at describing the ineffable as she is at capturing small human moments ... Throughout, Chai writes with an unsparing yet sympathetic eye for her characters, and with a knack for memorable turns of phrase and observations ... this collection confirms Chai’s place among the best Asian American writers of today.
With her masterful short story collection, Chai proves with exquisite craftsmanship that less can be so much more ... Chai shines a light on the deeper truths without needing to spell them out ... The concise tales in this literary gem linger in the mind long after the pages are turned.
Before I read this wonderfully quirky book of stories, I had never given much thought to such things as trainer bras or lucky dry fruit ... Chai’s use of these simple and even mundane items is just one of many effective devices in this book, and part of her refreshingly oblique approach to the immigrant experience ... Chai takes these well-worn tropes and engages with them in new and interesting ways, interlacing the familiar with the unexpected ... The world Chai depicts in this collection is both familiar and unfamiliar to Western readers, as in reality it would be to her characters, were they flesh-and-blood people. Her stories are well-crafted and the characters engaging ... Chai does not need long explanations from an omniscient narrator to make her point.
...astute ... There are some gems here, though Chai is unfortunately not immune to deploying common immigrant narrative tropes. Nevertheless, Chai thoughtfully depicts the loneliness of displacement, combining empathy and nuance to craft stories that are compassionate, illuminating, and sometimes brilliant.
...[a] solid short story collection ... Chai uses similar narrative structures and even repeated details to link the stories, though this sometimes serves to make them run together rather than acting as a successful unifying device ... But Chai’s confident writing and insights into characters...make her a writer to remember. Lightly plotted but emotionally intricate tales about the risks we take in trying to belong.
