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Works by Brian Leung |
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World Famous Love Acts (2004) -- Winner 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction; finalist 2004 Lambda Literary Gay Men's Debut Fiction Awards
Sweeping and fearless, World Famous Love Acts overrides stereotypes of race, age, gender, and sexuality. In this remarkable debut collection, Brian Leung creates a diverse landscape of distinctive characters. Among them, a 4' 10" hyperblonde Asian adult-film actress in Los Angeles, an archeologist working in China with her sun-scarred skin, a Midwestern screenwriter trying to "burn off" his accent, and a man with AIDS waiting to go home to die.
Loneliness and a persistent reach for meaning and comfort hold all these characters together. In "Six Ways to Jump off a Bridge," a Chinese egg-farmer confronts the solitude of old age after learning yet another person has made a suicidal jump from the bridge overlooking his home. In "Executing Dexter," two young boys from broken homes invent ways to torture and kill handmade dolls. And "Leases" takes place during "the time of morning to choose names for babies that will never be born" as a man waits to meet his wife in an apartment where for years he has brought male lovers.
Brian Leung writes like a true anthropologist, as both passionate outsider and gifted empath. His prose is crafted but genuine, both controlled and embracing. There seems to be no shoes he won't try on as he poignantly brings to life the search for a world of rescue and absolution.