White Dancing Elephants: Stories
A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha's birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange rescue mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. A boy seeks memories of his sister in the legend of a woman who weds death. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable.
In sixteen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color-cunning, bold, and resolute-facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other. Winner of the 2017 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, White Dancing Elephants marks the emergence of a new and original voice in fiction and explores feminist, queer, religious, and immigrant stories with precision, drama, and compassion.
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Priya Ayyar is an audiobook narrator, actor, and writer with a BFA and MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Her acting credits for television and film include Law & Order: Criminal Intent, All My Children, and the documentary The Children of War. She has appeared on stage in War of the Unheard, Aminta, and The Road Home, and she has written and performed in the plays Karmic Fusion and Losing Remote Control.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor.
-- "Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author"The seventeen stories in this debut collection take place around the world, exploring queer and interracial love, extramarital affairs, and grief over the disappearances of loved ones. The book provocatively probes the aftermath-the aftermath of death, of grim diagnoses, of abandonment, of monumental errors in judgment...An exuberant collection.
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"Bhuvaneswar tackles the intricate interactions of race, class, and sexuality in this enticing debut...Sharp and provocative, and Bhuvaneswar's voice rings true.
-- "Publishers Weekly"Bhuvaneswar's seventeen tales give voice to a variety of characters, sorrows, and experiences, constituting a striking collection.
-- "Booklist"Takes on important topics like racialized violence and violence against women-that which is committed against them and they which they commit themselves. Friendship, romance, and family are the ties that bind in this forthcoming collection.
-- "Rumpus.net"
