Sunlight and dust motes flooded the air as I cracked open the pages of Kenneth Yu’s sophomore short story collection. His earlier book featured a lot of stories that would comfortably be classified as horror. As a result, this reviewer purposefully read this second collection of stories during the day, expecting that it would have ghosts and other creepy things. All that golden light turned out to be remarkably apt, although not as a boost for this reader’s courage, as expected. Subverting expectations is something Yu does well in his short fiction.

“Sunny” in the title is used as a noun (the name of the protagonist), but it’s also a very apt adjective to describe this book.

Kenneth Yu’s stories, even the horror ones previously mentioned, are remarkably hopeful. Even the ones (especially the ones) set in the Philippines. In this new collection of ten stories, only one of them featured a ghost. The rest are an interesting mix of humanoid aliens, archangels that have adapted to the times, and prehistoric hunters, making for a mixed bag of stories with varying lengths and intensity of impact. In the pages we meet a girl who gets pulled out to sea by deadly riptides, a businessman who markets a whitening product that works overnight, and many others. The stories become vehicles for discussing various problems, like religious intolerance in Spider Hunt, or how we all have the weapons to build our nation if we work together, as in For Sale: Big Ass Sword.

I’m delighted to find a new all-time favorite short story in the book. Blending In is a stand-out heart wrencher of a story that made this reviewer cry. It tells of a high school basketball champion who gets targeted by his dad’s powerful enemies. For this gem of a story alone, the book is well worth buying. Another author might have finished the story earlier, focusing on the heartbreak of corrupt men using the child to get to the father. But Yu handles things differently, showing that there can be good things that come from local senators being former athletes, after all.

The theme that seems to run through most of Yu’s stories is hope… in the roles that each and every Filipino play, in the promise of a future, brighter day. While the author does not shirk from telling the truth about our country and its many daily challenges (the description of the long bank queues and the tellers who won’t stop chitchatting while on duty made me smile), Yu manages to always put a ray of hope, of light in the story. Evil is done, but there is justice to be had. There’s always a sliver of a silver lining, and a good deal of humor as well. No matter how bad things get, Yu’s fiction shows a way forward: have humor, lots of grit, and the occasional, forgivable lapse in polite language. “Sandali lang, gago.” “Sinabi mo, chong.”

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The reader purchased Kenneth Yu’s book The Greatest Fight of Sunny Granada and Other Stories from National Bookstore for P250. It is also available in Lazada via Anvil Publishing.

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER:

Gabi Francisco is a classically trained soprano who now performs in the English / Music / Drama classroom. On weekends she soaks in as much art and literature as she can, so she can pass her love for the arts on to her students. She passionately believes in the transformative role of arts education in nation-building. (IG: teacher.gabi.reads )