Reviews

From The Austin Chronicle

I went to a yoga workshop recently where, before teaching a new position, my instructor would explain that if we had any difficulties we were "coming upon our limitations." There was something in that phrase or the way she said it that transformed a frustrating lack of flexibility or balance into something surprisingly benign, like "coming upon" a bubbling brook or a clearing in the wood or a bunny rabbit. It transformed a weakness into a blameless fact, a discovery even. That's how I feel about Dao Strom's new book, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, in which she explores the way five Vietnamese-American women – a college student, a cocktail waitress, and three mothers at varying degrees of acculturation – come up against the chasms between themselves and the world, and especially between themselves and the men in their lives … Nora Ankrum.

From Publishers Weekly

Small moments carry enormous weight in these four loosely linked novellas about young Vietnamese women living in present-day California and Texas. Mary, a film student, feels compelled to find meaning in a brief encounter she'd had with the young, white Kenny. Darcy, a cocktail waitress in San Francisco who encounters an intruder in her apartment, wonders why she cannot be "the kind of woman you needed to be... one who kept up proper barriers." Leena, married to a successful white American businessman with whom she has a young daughter, finds suburban Austin somehow "less of a life than she'd bargained for." Sage, a half-Vietnamese singer and songwriter sexually attracted to a teacher at her son's preschool, searches for the people and place that will finally feel like home. For Strom (Grass Roof, Tin Roof), the most ordinary events—eating ice cream, swatting a fly—contain minor epiphanies that can delicately convey her characters' sense of disconnection and longing. Though such moments sometimes strain under the burden of significance, Strom, like her character Mary, more often wisely leaves her audience "a little wanting—she will do no interpreting for them." (May)
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From Booklist

In her second short story collection, following Grass Roof, Tin Roof (2003), Strom, a recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship, explores the idea of personal fulfillment. In understated language and thoughtful prose, Strom allows her female characters to consider roads not taken and quests abandoned as they seek their rightful place in the larger world. All are tied to Vietnam and struggle to fit into a new inner geography even as they look to the past and the choices their parents were forced to make. There is love here, but it is only one small element among many as Strom considers what happens when an adult makes the wrong choice, whether in friendship, marriage, or work. Quietly commanding in voice and perspective, she suggests that young women can be selfish creatures, especially when they are lonely, and examines the perils of forced intimacy. This illuminating and subtly daring collection can be read on many levels. Colleen Mondor. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Biography

Dao Strom was born in 1973 in Saigon to a well-known writer and journalist. Her mother fled the country with her when she was a baby; her father stayed and was later sent to reeducation camps. Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills with her mother and stepfather. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in the Chicago Tribune; Still Wild, an anthology edited by Larry McMurtry; and several literary magazines, and she is the recipient of a James Michener fellowship, the Chicago Tribune/Nelson Algren Award, and several other grants. She lives in Austin, Texas. Contact: http://www.daostrom.com

Book tour / music:

JULY 19, 7:00 PM:
BAZAAR CAFE
Book Reading, Signing & Music
5927 California St., (between 21st & 22nd ) San Francisco CA

JULY 20, 7:30 PM:
TOYON BOOKS
Book Reading & Signing
104 Matheson St, Healdsburg CA

JULY 21, Time TBA
THE STARRY PLOUGH
Music Show
3101 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley CA