Ling ma stories5/13/2023 ![]() They take place in little pockets removed from “real” life, whatever that means: inside a parallel world hidden behind a wardrobe at a cultish festival in a fictional country on a protracted vacation in a “de-Americanized” world in an MFA workshop. The stories of “Bliss Montage” keep the cover’s cheeky promise. The title and Ma's name are ruffled too, as if the author herself were shrink-wrapping delicious pleasure into a denatured product. On the cover of “Bliss Montage,” clear plastic clings to the nubbled curves of oranges, suffocating all that sunshine-y zing. ![]() Ma tells us what it looks like because she knows it matters. It’s a story collection “with a vaguely Chinese cover image of persimmons in a Ming dynasty bowl.” The image implies tradition and delicacy, pretty stories of domestic imbalance and clichéd Eastern promises of good fortune. ![]() In “Peking Duck,” one of the standout stories in Ling Ma’s collection, “ Bliss Montage,” a young writer presents an early copy of her new book to her mother. ![]() One of my former editors once told me not to mention a book’s cover in a review - that it cheapened the words inside by tying them to the work of the publicity and marketing buzzards. ![]()
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