To read the poems in In Thailand It Is Night is to encounter a speaker who knows that poetry lies deeply embedded in the body, and in the litany of breath itself. Sukrungruang has limned an extraordinary collection couched in the broken language of immigration and the mystical language of reincarnation, a book that is as dreamy as it is resolute. Deeply rooted in the landscape, these poems define emotion using the riches of the natural world: finches and cranes and crows, geckos and tree frogs and cardinals and moths—these creatures weave longing, memory, and family into an intricate, lyric-narrative web. “My palms are up,” writes Sukrungruang, and this gesture signifies how open his poetry is to the world, to the simultaneous beauty and suffering it brings.”

–Erika Meitner

Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy is the story of a first generation Thai-American growing up in a Thai family, and his constant attempts to reconcile cultural and familial expectations. It is a first-generation Asian American story, a mama’s boy story, a Chi-town Southsider story, a child of the 80s story, a child of a broken home story. In this book we meet a mother who started packing for her return to Thailand the moment she arrived in this country, whose dreams of a normal Thai son, of a normal Thai family, slowly erode; that mother’s best friend, the narrator’s second mother, who lives with and cooks for the family; and a wayward father whose dreams never quite come to fruition. Yet despite the cultural conflict that manifests in the home, in the community, and in Sukrungruang’s mind, this book is written with humor and playfulness, by a writer not afraid to make a little fun of himself nor to expose the moments of poignancy in his life. Readers will discover Buddhism from a new perspective as they read about Sukrungruang drawing the Buddha’s hands in temple, and see mainstream Western religion “god people” through his and his family’s eyes. They will follow his steps towards manhood, shaped by his two Thai mothers, his golf-obsessed father, and his Southside Chicago friends discussing the word “fairy.” People in Sukrungruang’s life are complex and real on the page, characters we know, have known, or want to know. Through scene-driven storytelling, readers will feel this world, this immigrant life is familiar; through subtle insight and observation they will understand the strangeness of it. A vital addition to Asian American literature, this book is also, quintessentially, American literature, and from the X-Men to temple, from “karate” lessons in a friend’s back yard to the unique spices of Thai food, sure to appeal to a wide variety of readers.

As Americans are the fattest people on earth, the fat, the formerly fat, those who feel fat, and those who fear fat encompass just about all of us. In this surprising collection of pieces, almost half of which are original to this anthology, some of our most lively, provocative writers explore the many folds of fat that make up reality. From David Sedaris’s hilarious assessment of his father’s fat prejudices in “A Shiner Like A Diamond” to Anne Lamott’s self-prescribed cathartic weight loss remedies in “Hunger”, Pam Houston’s rich literary panorama in “Out of Habit I Start Apologizing,” and psychiatrist Irving Yalom’s deeply moving confrontation of his own biases in “Fat Lady,” each piece in its unique way deals with fat as a matter of fact. Sometimes funny, sometimes angry, often illuminating and always engaging, these writers make a new and compelling case for why we should make room for a bigger behind.