Turmeric & Sugar: Stories

by Anna Vangala Jones

Turmeric & Sugar {Stories} is a collection of short fiction telling the stories of real life with a hint of surreal magic. Complex friendships between women are explored across race, age, and class, like that of a nanny and her employer and an unlikely one between an elderly widowed landlady and her young tenant whose husband of a few short years has gone missing. One girl learns what it means to truly inhabit her sister's shoes for a night, and another gets a second chance as a human after her previous life as an elephant. Two teenage outsiders fall in love for the first time and a married couple grapples with unimaginable loss. Daughters of immigrants struggle to navigate painful but fiercely loving relationships with the imperfect fathers who left their homes in another country to make the ultimate sacrifice for their children. The people in these stories are longing to understand each other and themselves-who they are and who they will become. They are visited by the ghosts that haunt them. All of these lives consist of joy and suffering, bitter and sweet, turmeric and sugar-not always in equal measure-but their diversity and similarities illuminate the human condition that unites us all, even as many of the individuals are seemingly driven apart by darkness. Fans of Anna's work in Berkeley Fiction Review, Wigleaf, and Catapult will love these stories. This recipe is one that's been simmering for a while.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

131 pages, Paperback

Published May 28, 2021

Reviews

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a graceful collection that moves seamlessly between different worlds, addressing the poignant complexity of the many kinds of love.

[Jeffrey Yamaguchi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been following and reading Anna Vangala Jones' stories for a while now through her published works in literary journals. Always impressed with the depth and range and emotions evoked through her writing. Turmeric & Sugar is an incredible collection of her stories, and I highly recommend it. "Echo" is my favorite story in the collection, and it's a piece that is beautiful, haunting, and poetically triumphant. Also, the cover design by Carolyn Brandt is gorgeous. Get this book on your shelf!

[Shannon McLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite story collection of the year!

[Alisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anna Vangala Jones brings these stories to life with the perfect mix of realism and mythicism. Between the dialogue and poetic language, there were so many passages I wanted to highlight or underline but i didn’t want to “ruin” the book. These are stories you’ll want to read more than once—stories you’ll want to share—and stories that will stay with you.

[Dan Crawley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant collection of stories by a very talented writer. I highly recommend Turmeric & Sugar: Stories.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely collection of stories full of imagination and insight. A must for lovers of short and flash fiction!

[Becky Robison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a lot of PTO saved up by the end of the year, so I took almost two weeks off. And one of those days I spent on the couch, reading this short story collection in a single sitting. These stories are tender, but that doesn’t mean they’re overly-sentimental. They tell of estranged families, elderly neighbors, reincarnated elephants. I think my favorite might have been “Tape and Glue,” where a surly teenage girl visits her father and has an unexpected confrontation with his new girlfriend. Full disclosure: I know Anna, so I may be biased. But I genuinely think these stories are well worth reading!

This review was originally published on my blog.

[Nina Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nuanced, gorgeous, and endlessly thought-provoking prose! The stories brought me in and were engaging, surprising at times and all a little magical. I enjoyed the fact that each story brought their own blend of turmeric and sugar, a bitter sweet mix of prose that everyone can enjoy.

[Sukhmony · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars :-)

I love the sequence of stories in this collection. The way certain details and emotional motifs carry across and are complicated from one story to the next make for a collection that’s cohesive yet exciting to read start to finish.

My favorite stories include: “A Day for Watching Birds”, “Tape and Glue”, “Long Distance Loyalty”, and “Tomorrow”

[Shome Dasgupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provided Blurb:

Reading Anna Vangala Jones's Turmeric & Sugar feels like being both home and away—in a shiny mirroring of cultures, we are taken into the unique realms of the mind where we find the vulnerability of our own lives right next us, as if it has been there forever but we only just turned our heads to see. Jones writes with a measure of a poetic philosopher in which each story dreams to find peace and comfort in worlds of words—deep in depth—this collection of stories mixes in all the ingredients of profound prose, majestic and soulful and magical.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Turmeric & Sugar” by Anna Vangala Jones

This slim little book of short stories is full of simple beautiful stories about relationships, each fraught with a little bit of tension and a little bit of sweetness. The final story in the book is the collection namesake and brought the whole theme together for me. Stories such as a father and daughter attempting to find shared ground again through their verbal volleys, a nanny whose employer has a strange attachment to her, a teen discovering first feelings of queer love through watching, an imaginary friend watching her creator grow up each hum with a sort of quiet sentimentality and strain. Rarely is there a significant emotional explosion; the power of these stories rests in the quiet. For me some of the stories were far too brief, leaving me want more out of Vangala Jones’s imaginative constructs and engaging characters; so many of these were flash fiction in 3 pages when I could see a whole novel spun out of them. But as they are they are clear-eyed, effective, and evocative of the kind of relationships we know are fraught but also hope they never end. My personal favorites were Mae & Me, In Twenty Years, Echo, Summer Love, Tape and Glue, and Long Distance Loyalty. 

[Morgan Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rather enjoyed this collection of stories! Definitely interested in the next collection of Anna Vangala Jones’ work.