With a deceptively simple yet graceful style, Frances Hwang captures the thousand minor battles waged in the homes of immigrants - struggles to preserve time-honoured traditions or break free of them, to maintain authority or challenge it and to take advantage of modern excesses without diluting one's ethnic identity.
In 'Garden City', a weary Chinese couple struggling to evict their deadbeat tenant, is forced to face the aftermath of their teenaged son's death from cancer. In 'Transparency', Henry Liu - sure that he is dying - is given a second lease on life. And in 'The Old Gentleman', a daughter discovers a dark secret from her father's past.