Turmeric and Sugar: Stories

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.