Amazon.com description: Product Description: The short story cycle, a collection of stories that are simultaneously independent and interdependent, demonstrates a convergence of old traditions with a renewed concept of nationhood in a culturally plural society. The dynamics of the short-story cycle make it particularly approriate for the incorporation of immigrant legacies while adapting to the practices of the culture in which the work itself is created.

This book specifically analyzes major works by a number of important Asian American and Asian Canadian writers, such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Shyam Selvadurai, Amy Tan, Rohinton Mistry, Sara Suleri, Garrett Hongo, Terry Watada, Toshio Mori, Sylvia Watanabe, M G Vassanji and Wayson Choy. The manner in which these diverse writers appropriate the cycle in oder to dramatize the act of re-presentation of their origins becomes a metaphor for the complexity of modern culture and the process towards self-definition.