Home Remedies: Stories

The stories in Home Remedies were so enjoyable. This is the type of book you want to read and enjoy slowly, and really take in. Xuan Juliana Wang does a phenomenal job bringing the characters to life. As an Asian American, I felt these stories were so real and relatable. The writing and storytelling is so good though that I think anybody would enjoy this.Such a refreshing piece!! I read so many rave reviews about the author from editorial sources and I truly hope that she will publish more books in the future, as I’m craving more of her writing. Read this!!

This collection is the kind you'll want to read slowly. Each story is told from the perspective of a Chinese or Chinese American young person, and each one ends with a little knife twist bang in your heart. But the similarities between the stories end there. The characters are so different, across the globe, from China to suburban Los Angeles to Paris to the future to the past. They are gay and straight and men and women and they have parents or they're missing parents. It's a kaleidoscopic portrait of what it means to be a person who has dragged their baggage across oceans and time, who's just trying to love and build and contribute and breathe.Take this on your next vacation, buy it for your daughter, give it to your professor. It's the kind of book you want to savor, then share.

I finished this collection and wished I could keep reading and keep swimming through the beautiful prose and through the lives of all these complex, fully realized characters. This is truly a book of today’s world, with its piercing insights into the passions and ennui of millennials, and unflinching observations of alienation and family and love. Days of Being Mild might be the most quotable/excerptable story in the bunch, but my favorite is Fuerdai to the Max - fast-paced, hilarious, but also searingly sad. Hints of Less Than Zero without the cynicism. The eponymous short is another favorite, this one will break your heart without you even realizing it.Xuan Juliana Wang’s work is full of promise and I can’t wait to read her next work.

I've long finished this book, and experienced it again in audiobook form (which I highly recommend), but many of these characters and stories are still lingering with me! Xuan has written a gorgeous, soulful collection of stories that brings the global, modern and intersectional lives of Chinese people to the page for the first time. The characters and worlds she paints in each story are rare and intriguing -- a pair of Chinese Olympic team synchronized divers wrestling with a secret, a lonely immigrant Chinese family crammed into NY Chinatown apartment, the awkward girl in Paris who inhabits the ghosts of the designer clothes she inherited from a dead girl. At times, I would just marvel of how she would someone could render such unique worlds with such an emotional punch. These are stories you’ll want to savor!

I have now read this collection twice, gleaning even more insight and beauty from it the second read than I did on the first (which was A LOT). With pinpoint precision, profound love, and a cold, sharp eye Ms. Wang unflinchingly reveals family, culture, community, and generational miscommunications. As fascinating as it is to learn about the world of China and Chinese immigrants, these brilliant stories transcend ethnicity to land on the universal human condition of a beating heart. Read slowly, if you can, to linger in the remarkably graceful prose and inimitable turns of phrase.

Leave them wanting more. Sometimes that's just frustrating. I get the concept of a non ending in a short story but some of these were so good I felt angry when I turned the page to discover it was over. Yes, that's a compliment. I'm not Chinese yet I appreciated the insight into the culture and the intricacies of the family relationships. Beautiful prose, thoughtful fascinating stories. Thank you.

Such a uniquely beautiful collection of stories specifically about what it means to be a Chinese or Chinese-American millennial, and more broadly, what it's like to be a first-generation Asian-American. You'll laugh, cry, and find yourself in some of these characters. Read this book slowly and deliberately so you can savor each story.

I loved these stories---they're so unique, and shimmering, and utterly hypnotic. They are lit from within with humor, warmth, and an impeccable sense for detail and style. Wang can really write. It's hard to believe that this is her first book, it feels so calm and masterly. Also, reading it opened my horizon to a completely different way of thinking --- I think Wang is just bursting with ideas and insight. Just read this. It's so good for you.

Well, as any other compilation of stories, there are very good ones, good ones and some less interesting. But the whole is a bunch of vibrant moments, described by a talented writer with a brilliant future.

I like this remedy. Taste sweet but a little bitter.