Displacement

A Hmong refugee sees snow in Vermont for the first time. A Laotian comedian attempts to speak truth to power with his satirical musical revue. A fortune-telling taxi driver in Bangkok ponders his inability to see a foreigner's future. A Burmese monk walks toward his final act and a group of soldiers at the front gate of his temple. In this collection of fiction stories set in Southeast Asia and the USA, the author examines these and three other cases of physical, emotional, and spiritual displacement. These dislocations, whether through a meeting of cultures, a move into another culture, a fight against one's own culture, or sometimes because of a culture-blind traumatic event, bring about new perspectives, new possibilities, and sometimes even tragedy. These seven stories don't seek easy answers, but they do seek to find a community amid cultures, and contemplation in the midst of displacement.