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These stories open puzzle boxes of intensity; some shut after just a glimpse; in others you can hear the screaming as you turn the page. Sosin’s stories always deliver the memorable image, always attempt to decode desire. They pull the rug out from under your expectations, whether it’s a notion of what a story should be or a sudden shift in perspective that blasts the landscape wide open.-Patricia Weaver Francisco

The stories in Garden Primitives range from still to explosive, the language from poetic and sensual to coarse. What is common among them is a passionate allegiance to both the heart and the intellect. Sosin’s characters are at once base and complex as we see the continuous motion of their inner lives, mingle and withdraw from the external world. Revealed are tangles of perception and rationalization, driven by desire and fear. Garden Primitives is interested in questions, in pain and pleasure, in beauty and sharp edges.

The cinematic eye of Sosin’s roving narrators leads us through the snowy and suburban decay of a family on a perfect winter night; into the narrow but honest mind of a farmer being bowled over by urban sprawl; on the beach, where a woman’s life becomes hyper-focused on the survival of a turtle nest; around a campfire on a north woods vacation where the gaps between parents and children, friends and lovers widen; and through gardens both vegetable and glassed where the language is as fertile as what grows there.

Garden Primitives is a debut to a voice and vision concerned with the Eden in and around us, and with our clumsiness and grace in the face of the unknown.

Danielle Sosin received a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship in 1999. One of her short stories, What Mark Couldn’t See, was read on National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Garden Primitives is her first book-length publication. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

â??Wang Pingâ??s The Last Communist Virgin is a beauty of a collection. She has interwoven the earthiness of China and the harshness of immigrant life . . . to create a series of short stories that are at once pitiful, heartbreaking, funny, and deeply inspiring.â?â??Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

From the restaurants of New Yorkâ??s Chinatown to the retail emporium of Bergdorf Goodman, and from remote Chinese military outposts to the streets of Beijing, the tremors of Chinaâ??s rapid economic and cultural growth can be felt. As the characters in these stories struggle to find their way, a young girl discovers love amidst a sea of angry Red Guards, émigrés navigate New Yorkâ??s relentless rat race, an ambitious businesswoman finds the meaning of success in her rival, and an old man returns to a Beijing he doesnâ??t recognize on a mission to restore his son-in-lawâ??s flagging honor.

Moving smoothly across political, cultural, and personal borders and between countries, continents, and languages, these stories open a window into the rapid transformations of an ancient culture and the soulâ??s thirst for adventure and harmony in a quickly changing world.

Wang Ping was born in Shanghai and grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. After three years spent farming in a mountain village commune, she attended Beijing University. In 1985 she left China to study in the United States, earning her PhD from New York University. She is the acclaimed author of the short story collection American Visa, the novel Foreign Devil, two poetry collections: Of Flesh & Spirit and The Magic Whip, and the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. She now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and teaches at Macalester College. Visit her website at www.wangping.com.