Short, Vigorous Roots: A Contemporary Flash Fiction Collection of Migrant Voices
The line between imagination and reality blurs in these forty poignant pieces written by first- and second-generation immigrant authors.
This flash fiction anthology examines the experiences of being a transplant in a foreign land and looks critically at what it means to forsake tongues, traditions, and comforts in the hope of starting a new life in another world. These stories push readers to expand their understanding of the world beyond their own front doors.
The collection contains forty affecting works written by several multigenerational immigrant authors from countries around the world, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Cuba, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldavia, Morocco, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam. Regardless of their origin, all share the experience of putting down roots in new soil and examining how adapting to new lives and lands impacts the characters' understanding of themselves and their community. The stories are organized into four parts: "Past the Limits of the Familiar," "The Change is Slow," "Inheriting the Earth," and "Tired of Waiting for Home." At a thousand words or fewer, every vignette redefines resilience and the meaning of home.
Contributing Authors
- Ellison Alcovendaz
- Nancy Au
- Genia Blum
- Aida Bode
- Raffi Boyadjian
- Philip Charter
- James Corpora
- Walerian Domanski
- Ingrid Jendrzejewski
- Varya Kartishai
- Masha Kisel
- Ruth Knafo Setton
- Nina Kossman
- Rimma Kranet
- Shaun Levin
- Amit Majmudar
- Maija Mäkinen
- Sayantika Mandal
- Erick Messias
- A. Molotkov
- Feliz Moreno
- Kathy Nguyen
- Alexandros Plasatis
- Irina Popescu
- Stuart Stromin
- Edvin Subasic
- Yong Takahashi
- Alizah Teitelbaum
- Lazar Trubman
- Jose Varghese
- Marina Villa
- Yara Zghbeib
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Mark Budman is first generation immigrant to the US. He is an engineer by training but works as a medical interpreter. His fiction has appeared in Catapult, Witness, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel My Life at First Try, published by Counterpoint, and is the co-editor of anthologies published by Ooligan Press, Persea, Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (China), and University of Chester (UK). Learn more at markbudman.com.
Susan O'Neill is the author of two books: the fiction collection Don't Mean Nothing (Ballantine Books, UMass Press, and Serving House Books), and a slim volume of mostly humorous short essays, Calling New Delhi for Free (Peace Corps Writers Books). She co-edited Vestal Review, the oldest continuously-running journal for flash fiction, from its beginnings in 2000 until 2020, and has published stories and essays in a fair number of literary magazines, virtual and print. She was nominated for the Pushcart twice, in fiction and in nonfiction.
Each story vividly portrays the trials, fears, and hopes of an emigrant immigrating into a strange land. A wondrous array of voices and moods from a wondrous variety of countries.
-- Joe Taylor, Director at Livingston Press
The anthology is a space of brevity and closeness; this quality unites the deeply character-driven works.
--Kathryn Savage, at World Literature Today
Short, Vigorous Roots is a work of resilience, and complex beauty.
--Kathryn Savage, World Literature Today
The stories in Short, Vigorous Roots are as the volume's title implies: immediate and bright, brief and grasping. The immediacy and the brevity of flash fiction emphasizes how putting down roots in a new land is an incomplete process, an ongoing story of creation and survival, fragile and tenuous, yet ardent and resilient . . . In less than a thousand words, these stories cross borders and generations. Whatever belonging these characters arrive to, it will bear the marks of the past and tenaciously move forward.
-- Matt Chelf, Northwest Review
