The line between imagination and reality blurs in these forty poignant pieces written by first- and second-generation immigrant authors.

This flash fiction anthology examines the experiences of being a transplant in a foreign land and looks critically at what it means to forsake tongues, traditions, and comforts in the hope of starting a new life in another world. These stories push readers to expand their understanding of the world beyond their own front doors.

The collection contains forty affecting works written by several multigenerational immigrant authors from countries around the world, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Cuba, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Mexico, Moldavia, Morocco, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam. Regardless of their origin, all share the experience of putting down roots in new soil and examining how adapting to new lives and lands impacts the characters’ understanding of themselves and their community. The stories are organized into four parts: "Past the Limits of the Familiar," "The Change is Slow," "Inheriting the Earth," and "Tired of Waiting for Home." At a thousand words or fewer, every vignette redefines resilience and the meaning of home.

Contributing Authors

• Ellison Alcovendaz
• Nancy Au
• Genia Blum
• Aida Bode
• Raffi Boyadjian
• Philip Charter
• James Corpora
• Walerian Domanski
• Ingrid Jendrzejewski
• Varya Kartishai
• Masha Kisel
• Ruth Knafo Setton
• Nina Kossman
• Rimma Kranet
• Shaun Levin
• Amit Majmudar
• Maija Mäkinen
• Sayantika Mandal
• Erick Messias
• A. Molotkov
• Feliz Moreno
• Kathy Nguyen
• Alexandros Plasatis
• Irina Popescu
• Stuart Stromin
• Edvin Subašic
• Yong Takahashi
• Alizah Teitelbaum
• Lazar Trubman
• Jose Varghese
• Marina Villa
• Yara Zghbeib

Beating Boris

by Masha Kisel

Ever since Boris Efimovich became her stepfather when she was six years old, Sasha fantasized about growing big enough to overpower him. When he smacked the back of her head or hit her arms, buttocks, or stomach with a belt, she imagined him as a frail old man. His white beard down to his knees, he would cower in the corner of their small kitchen as she raised a frying pan over him, ready to beat him senseless.

Four years later, with the help of Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, they were allowed to leave the Soviet Union. An invisible hand, large as the fear of the unknown, plucked them out of Kiev and carried them from Vienna to Rome to Chicago. They dangled without citizenship, suspended over foreign lands by the kind giant’s grasp. At every checkpoint they were interviewed. “How were you persecuted for being Jewish? Which slurs did they call you? Were you beaten? How badly did it hurt and where?”

Boris Efimovich stopped eating. His hair began to grey. His arms grew weak. He could barely manage to slap Sasha across the face.

“Oh, his delicate nerves! Will he make it to 1989?” Sasha’s mother cried when they were detained an extra week in Austria.

“Maybe it’s because I told them that I’m a good Communist and all Americans are bourgeois pigs?” Sasha said as a joke. No one found it funny. She tried again. “I said that Boris Efimovich is a KGB agent.” He was almost too broken to take off his belt. Sasha didn’t care. She gorged on Vienna’s roasted chestnuts, foot-long hotdogs, and chocolate-covered pretzels. She gaped in amazement at the roses blooming in the middle of December—red as her stepfather’s handprint on her cheek—as she walked on a cold beach in Rome.

A few months after they arrived in America, Boris Efimovich stopped leaving their fourth-story Chicago apartment. All day long he sat in an armchair they had salvaged from the dumpster, watching the empty yard—so different from their neighborhood in Kiev. There were no gossiping grandmothers warming benches, no children playing outside.

“This is America?” he’d say in a frightened whisper. “Where are all the people?”Sasha bundled up in a coat too small for her rapidly growing body and walked out the door. She was meeting her new friend Amy at the Greek diner where they would eat American French fries and laugh in English. Sasha looked up.

Boris Efimovich was just a small figure in the window.