Atravesando: An Aster(ix) Anthology

by Fiona Cheong (Contributor), Angie Cruz (Editor), Oindrila Mukherjee (Editor)

An Aster(ix) Anthology features nineteen writers, both established and emerging, whose fiction and poetry embraces the themes of breaking through and crossing over. The writers hail from all over the country, many of whom inhabit liminal spaces, embodying Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands where the "borders" are often indistinguishable and the characters live in multiple worlds simultaneously. The stories and poems challenge and reveal to us what we trade when we love or are made to love, when we move or are forced to move and how it feels when we experience an unexpected loss. Characters dream of lottery tickets, driving a car, being truly loved; rubber plants, suitcases and misbehaving men are ripped apart; Roosters, husbands and children die. The daughters of Bible-thumping and manipulative mothers, as well as stubborn and ambitious fathers, these women struggle and succeed to carve a space of their own. This book is a true cornucopia of humor, tragedy and sensuality, featuring some of the most compelling and electrifying female protagonists. Edited by acclaimed writers Angie Cruz and Oindrila Mukherjee, the collection is an essential read. At a time when borders both, psychic and physical, are being threatened and questioned, this anthology reimagines female narratives and the challenges faced by women today.

176 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2016

About the author

Fiona Cheong holds a BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. She is an Associate Professor of English and the author of two novels, The Scent of the Gods (W.W. Norton 1991), which was nominated for a National Book Award, and Shadow Theatre (Soho 2002), described in The Women’s Review of Books as a “lush, stylistically inventive novel” and “subtly subversive work.” Her shorter work is featured in Charlie Chan is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Literature (ed. Jessica Hagedorn, Viking 1993) and Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing (ed. Shirley Geok-lin Lim and Cheng-Lok Chua, New Rivers 2000). She has taught at Howard and Cornell Universities and at the Hurston-Wright Writers Workshop, and has been a judge for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the Massachusetts Council for the Arts Awards. She has received numerous grants for her teaching and writing, including an Innovation in Education Award from the University of Pittsburgh’s Provost Office (2006), an artist’s fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts (2007) and a Make It Your Own Award from the Case Foundation (2008) for her civic engagement project, Re-Imagining Our City. She is a co-founder of the Asian American Writers Forum at the University of Pittsburgh and of its current manifestation, The Writers of Color Workshop. She is working on the final segment of her trilogy of novels set in Singapore, and on a book about teaching and writing.

(from http://www.writing.pitt.edu/people/fa...)