Thank you @netgallary and @penguinpress for this wicked set of short stories e-arc by one of my favourite satirical authors @elainehsiehchou.

This is a collection of short dark viseral stories with themes of colonisation, coming home, finding both parts of yourself, and growing up as children of traumatised parents.. some of them stories are speculative fiction.

Brilliant stories
- Mail order bride
- Featured backgrounds
- Happy endings

Some stories made me groan with frustration at the audacity of the colonizers, and the many repeated attempts of the global majority to educate, empathise and assimilate. There is a lot of nauce and pain on the pages; this has taken me a few weeks to really take in and process.

i loved the exploration of desires and human wants. Each story carried it's own color and were really intriguing to read, almost all of the stories flew by and made me want to read a whole novel about that story.

I will always take it as a good sign when a book leaves me wanting more. Each of these stories could have turned into full-fledged books.

What I love most about these stories is that feeling of being human - running away from something, hiding from your past, being afraid to confront your own personal issues. Chou writes cleverly and demands that you do a little bit of introspective work.

A solid collection! Thank you Penguin Random House and Netgalley for the opportunity to read in advance.

I’m a big fan of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel, Disorientation, and I’m so happy she delivered again with a short story collection here. Where Are You Really From is full of interrogations of race, gender, class, and all of it delivered with her sharp and darkly funny writing.

My favorite stories are “Carrot Legs,” “Mail Order Love,” “Featured Background” and “Casualties of Art: A Novella.”

Chou’s characters aren’t meant to be likeable, but they feel so real, whether they’re a kid like in “Carrot Legs” or an elderly man confronting his estranged daughter for the first time in “Featured Background.” There’s not really subtlety in what she’s trying to convey, whether that’s commentary about the treatment of both white and Asian women by Asian men, the treatment of Asian sex workers who are “layovers” for white men, or the anxiety and tragedy of growing up and away from childhood and its innocence. However, that’s one of the things I like most about her writing and what makes it feel genuine.

I also really liked the pacing of these stories. Most short story collections can either drag or go too fast for my tastes, but Where Are You Really From is a perfect mix of introspective, slower narratives and faster ones. I was consistently interested in where the story would take me and I was rarely disappointed. Each one feels complete in its own right.

Overall, Chou has solidified herself as an auto-buy author for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This review has been scheduled to be posted on Goodreads and my blog on August 5, 2025.