When the Color Started: Stories

A straight-A Chinese-American high school student mourns the death of her mother and makes a new friend from Senegal; a suburban mother of three discovers that the Arab boy she lost her virginity to is now a jihadist; an American boxer in Thailand unexpectedly comes to a fight-night reckoning with his escort girlfriend and the local authorities. Bradford Philen's newest collection of stories gleefully dives into the problematic archetypes that loom largest in the American psyche-Beijing expat party girls, black single mothers in LA's West Side, registered sex offenders-and dares to probe their inner lives with Chekhovian grace and understanding. As a complex and provocative collection that openly challenges our most deeply held notions of authenticity in storytelling, When the Color Started delivers a sensitive and fearless depiction of how one half of a country dares to imagine the other.