The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys: Four Stories

"The book is informed by the Vietnamese immigrations of the nineteen-seventies but is filled with social observation of contemporary middle-class culture and indie sensibility . . . Quietly beautiful, Strom's stories are hip without being ironic." --The New Yorker

When The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys was first published in 2006, it was groundbreaking in its depiction of contemporary young Vietnamese women living in the United States, centering their ordinary lives as mothers, lovers, friends, and daughters against the backdrop of immigration and assimilation.

Available now for the first time in paperback and featuring a new introduction by Dao Strom, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys is a beautifully written, psychologically astute foray into the rite of female passage.

Mary is a college film student full of yearning who's confounded by the casual give-and-take of the people around her; Darcy, a twenty-something musician, must confront the dark and unknown in the form of a naked stranger who repeatedly breaks into her ramshackle sublet; Leena, aged thirty, is isolated and alone after having been transplanted from Vietnam to Texas through marriage to an American businessman; and finally Sage, a new mother in her early thirties who finds herself, while on a road trip with her four-year-old boy and his father, entertaining thoughts of new romantic possibilities.

With both shrewd insight into the moral perils of contemporary life and a deep compassion for the fumbles we make along the way, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys is as intimate as it is sweeping--revealing the gritty truths of loving, leaving, and growing up.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
Published: 11/12/2019
ISBN: 9781640092709
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.10d