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A playful and deeply affective short story collection about the histories, technologies, and generational divides that shape our relationships—from the award-winning writer of Days of Distraction.
Compelling and perceptive, Tomb Sweeping probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants.
A woman known only to her neighbors as “the Asian recycling lady” collects bottles from the streets she calls home. A young college grad ponders the void left from a broken friendship. An unfulfilled housewife in Shanghai finds a secret outlet for her ambitions in an undercover gambling den. Two strangers become something more through the bond of mistaken identity.
These characters, adeptly attuned to the mystery of living, invite us to consider whether it is possible for anyone to entirely do right by another. Tomb Sweeping brims with remarkable skill and talent in every story, keeping a definitive pulse on loss, community, and what it means to feel fully alive. With her debut story collection, Chang further establishes herself as “a writer to watch” (New York Times Book Review).
Reviews
“Haunting and mesmerizing; it’s only after you finish reading Alexandra Chang's Tomb Sweeping that you realize there were so many gaps in you that her stories were destined to fill. A marvelous collection.” — Jason Mott, author of Hell of a Book
“Alexandra Chang is a riveting and exciting presence in our literature. Her stories are honest, insightful, bold, and full of heart.” —George Saunders, author of Liberation Day
“Chang writes deftly about the wonder and volatility of becoming. In Tomb Sweeping, family (or lineage) is a matter of both predestiny and aberration.” —Raven Leilani, author of Luster
“Compelling and compulsively readable, Tomb Sweeping reveals that Chang is a writer who’s only just beginning to show readers her impressive range. Subtle wisdom runs rampant through these pages, often cloaked in humor or character quirks or dialogue…”—San Francisco Chronicle
“Chang’s distinctive style and wry tone bring her characters to startling life, all the while rendering the pain of their loneliness and desire for stability in stark relief. This is a triumph.” —Publishers Weekly starred review
“Following her phenomenal debut novel, Days of Distraction, Chang returns with Tomb Sweeping, a collection of inventive, affecting, and delightfully strange stories featuring humble characters across China and the US who navigate daily disappointments, work mundanities, and unlikely encounters. Whether set in rundown homes or an illegal gambling den, these stories reveal the high stakes of even the smallest personal dramas, and the ways we seek out comfort as we go through them.” —Bustle
“Arresting… Chang’s sharp observations again transform her fiction into bitingly acute truths.” —Booklist
“By laying bare the human need to convey meaning upon places, technology, and possessions, Chang reveals our propensity to project myths if only to hide the loneliness and the estrangement we all share… [her] stories reveal humanity through the mundane… Tomb Sweeping is a nod to forbears, a meditation of our estranged ancestors, faults and all, who have stumbled before us.” —Northwest Review