Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories

The title story is an unexpectedly delightful story about Richard Nixon’s visit to China, as told from the perspective of a young girl. The story demonstrates the author’s piquant take on a decidedly Chinese perspective, with the moral being that perspective is everything or, perhaps, what looks great may be an illusion.

The rest of the stories in this volume tend to be quite a slog to get through. There seems to be no straight storyline, but rather a vague wandering of random thoughts. What was so charming in the first story tends to wear a bit on this reader over time. Or, perhaps, the immigrant’s perspective on the mundane has been overused in many recent books. Or, maybe, the mundane is just that.

Whatever the case may be, what this reader loved about the first story tends to drag on in the rest of the book. After all, when the character muses about why Americans like to walk in the woods despite mosquitos, it demonstrates a much too naive perspective on the world. Naivety may be a quality that Americans allow only to themselves.