REVIEW

The Potential of Radio and Rain by Myna Chang is an award-winning, gorgeously atmospheric collection of twenty-three flash fictions set in the dusty, thirsty shortgrass prairie of the American Southwest.

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This collection is simply breathtaking. Its cohesion. Its breadth. Its resonant, nuanced prose. The epigraph (taken from the fourth story in the collection) brilliantly captures the book’s tone: The prairie is made of dirt and sky, of shushling grass and starling night—and the creatures caught between. And they are caught, these creatures, human and animal alike, by their desire for water, for stable weather, stable lives.

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Chang’s characters—nearly everyone, from teens to grandparents—exhibit a shrewd sense that their gusty prairie is both reality and metaphor. Tornadoes destroy local diners, send forks flying into walls—and aptly symbolize the whirl of complicated lives and fragile relationships. Folks yearn for something new to happen, to go somewhere, escape. To California, maybe. See the ocean. But hardscrabble prairie life makes for even harder economics, so maybe it’s enough (as in the story “Limeade Thunder”) for four teenagers to make it 120 miles in a beat-up truck to a ZZ Top concert.

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This collection is firmly rooted in place. Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, but mostly Oklahoma, where Chang was born and raised. The stories span decades, yet loosely connect through repeat characters and locations, which lends the collection a sense of shared culture. We can expect the most biting gossip to come from the ladies down at the Methodist Church. We know there’s a weak spot in the link fence at the Oasis Hotel, so anyone can slip through on a hot day and use the pool.​ The collection flows so well the reader begins to intuit the sensibilities of a local, such that, three quarters through, when we get to the story “They Were the Years of Fat Water,” it instinctively feels like a tall tale handed down. Years of enough rain? The notion seems fantastic. By the final, titular story, dust lines our nostrils, the back of our throats, while the sight of fireflies lighting the night lulls us into a state of peace. The radio picks up a signal all the way from Chicago. Chicago! Chang’s prose lets us float on the idea, and for a moment, breathe the world in and dream. Sometimes—maybe—it’s enough to touch the possibility of something more.

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Book Details

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The Potential of Radio and Rain can be purchased here. (Scroll down to the chapbook catalog.)

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Published by CutBank Books. The volume is 5.5”x 8.5” and comprises 46 pages of prose. The cover has a silkiness that makes the volume a pleasure to hold. The paper is a pleasing cream color.

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