Monstress

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, startling, and gloriously unique

stories set amongst the Filipino communities of California and the Philippines—now

with a new preface by the author 

Monstress stands as a landmark of American multicultural

short fiction. Lysley Tenorio’s tales are framed by tense, fascinating

dichotomies: tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, pop

culture and high culture, the American and the Filipino. Tenorio balances these

opposites with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, exploring universal

themes—the sometimes-suffocating ties of family, the melancholy of isolation,

the need to find connections—with uncommon empathy and breathtaking

originality.