The Immigrant's Refrigerator

by Elena Georgiou

Overview

Fiction. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. If luck is on an author's side, a book reaches its audience at the right time. Elena Georgiou's THE IMMIGRANT'S REFRIGERATOR can confidently make this claim. Populated with a cast of characters that shine the light on what it means to be an outsider in the early part of the 21st century, this story collection takes its reader into the private lives of those who have entered a country legally, others who were forced to enter illegally, and the rest who call a country home as a result of birth; characters searching for what they need to sustain them on their journeys towards a future that will not only be a place of refuge, but also one of hope.

"Quiet, yet powerful stories...Shows characters' shared humanity and the compassion and kindness that can help overcome differences. Georgiou's timely collection will appeal to any reader interested in immigration issues."--Booklist

"Exquisite...At a moment when America's political response to The Other is triggering a national crisis of conscience, these poignant stories remind us of the vital role that human compassion plays in bridging ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic divides. Sustenance acquires profound meaning in these tales of endurance, hope, and the abiding power of quiet generosity."--Aimee Liu

"Devastating...and still, it is a celebration of life in all of its scars and joys, chance and invention, awe and longing to be seen, and, over and over, a testament to the tender, transformative power of acceptance and love."--Rahna Reiko Rizzuto

"Dazzlingly good...I loved this collection."--John McManus

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998512648
Publisher:	GenPop Books
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Elena Georgiou is the author of the short-story collection THE IMMIGRANT'S REFRIGERATOR (GenPop Books, 2018), and the poetry collections RHAPSODY OF THE NAKED IMMIGRANTS (Harbor Mountain Press) and mercy mercy me (University of Wisconsin), which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award. She is also co-editor (with Michael Lassell) of the LGBTQ poetry anthology, The World In Us (St. Martin's Press). Georgiou has won an Astraea Emerging Writers Award, a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship, and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Georgiou is an editor at Tarpaulin Sky Press and the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College. Georgiou is an English-Cypriot originally from London, where she spent the first twenty- seven years of her life. Since then, she has lived in the US—first in New York, now in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2018
A Lambda Literary Award-winning poet, Georgiou portrays immigrants to America, both legal and illegal, in heartfelt, no-nonsense prose. The opening story, "Gazpacho," features a man in a Mexican border town who provides soup for boys heading to America by train ("el tren de la muerte")—or being forced to return. For money, he drives a hearse, frequently repatriating children's bodies from America—257 so far; "each time, …a small country turns to dust inside me." In another piece, white employees at a confectionary find that listening to news about police shootings "with a dark-skinned man—a refugee!—in their midst had made their hands clumsier," and an MFA student from Northern Ireland who works for a gay escort service can't be friends "with anyone who had not known troops standing on the corner of the same road as the house in which they were born." It's indeed brutally hard to imagine that kind of experience, but Georgiou brings it closer. VERDICT A keen, sobering work; ten percent of profits will go to the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Center.

Library Journal