Description
Book SynopsisNamed a Public Picks 2023 by
Public Books Long List forthe 2024 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction,
Boundless Deep, and Other Stories is a portrait of a family that holds together despite everything. By turns introspective, surreal, and bitingly funny, this collection of linked short stories spans seven decades across Japan and the United States and shows the tenacity of relationships fractured by language and distance.
At the funeral of her old boss, a grandmother confronts the legacy of the draft letters she delivered as a girl during World War II. Facing the loss of his job, a father becomes the caricature strangers have always believed him to be. A graduate student living far from home is worn down by the reality of what it takes to save even a small piece of the world. Along the way, we meet communist revolutionary Shigenobu Fusako hiding out in a Tokyo hote
Trade Review"Del Raye's thoughtful collection explores loss, relationships, racial tensions, and war, and its aftermath, in surreal, tender, and often humorous ways that will keep readers captivated until the end."—
Booklist, starred review
“Gen Del Raye’s
Boundless Deep, and Other Stories is a moving, shape-shifting collection that examines life at the margins of belonging. Haunted by war, ghosts, sea creatures, and existence itself, Del Raye’s characters are straddling worlds, wedging themselves into whatever space they can fit. With the emotional precision and imagery of a poet, and the nimble ear of a translator, Del Raye’s prose is charming, surprising, and abundant in empathy.”—Cecily Wong, author of
Diamond Head and
KaleidoscopeTable of Contents1
Hideto, in Motion and at Rest
Hideto Worn Down in Gainesville, 2001
My Mother Takes Me to a Public Bath
Yukari Kneeling in My Mother’s Garden, 1994
Chie and George, 2015
Half-Blind
My Father Will Not Admit He Has Become a Clown
2
The Mystery of Animal Grief
Nishina Sekio in a Tunnel Alone
Preparations, 2015
Home Burial
Housefire
Suicide Drills, 1945
The Grandma Invasion
We Are a Woman Bombed / A Picture of Grace
Nishina Sekio in a Broken Machine
Harvest Mouse
Hack Science
A Shark Is an Animal That Blushes When You Touch Its Face
Synonyms for Climate Change
Boundless Deep
My Grandmother Stops Some Nights on Her Way to the Outhouse to Watch a Ghost Climb Down to the Sea
Nishina Sekio Imprisoned in Dreams
3
My Father and Shigenobu Fusako in the Hallway of the Hotel New Otani, 1980
Or Go Further Back
Elastico
What My Mother Doesn’t Say
The Failings of Our Fathers
Incredible Lifelike Whale Comes Up for Air, Again and Again
Acknowledgments
Selected Sources
