Deceit and Other Possibilities: Stories

 In her powerful collection, first published in 2016 & now featuring new stories, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral & adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none. Veering between dream & disappointment, these stories shine a light on the conflict between self & society, tradition & change. 

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal to an obedient daughter turned Stanford pretender, from a Chinatown elder summoned to his village to a Korean American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in the collection illustrate the conflict between self & society, tradition and change. 

In “What We Have Is What We Need,” winner of The Atlantic’s Student Writing Contest, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together. With insight & wit, Hua writes about what wounds us & what we must survive. Deceit & Other Possibilities marked the emergence of a remarkable new writer & is now available more broadly.