Winner of the Barbara DiBernard Prize in FictionDaddy Issues is a collection of moving and complex—yet simply and directly told—stories of queer Asian American experiences in Los Angeles. In many of these stories, the protagonists are artists and writers and other creative thinkers living on the fringe of survival, attempting to align a life of the imagination with the practical considerations of career, income, and family: a gay father who hasn’t come out...

The AIDS crisis reshaped life in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 90s and radicalized a new generation of queer Asian Americans with a broad vision of health equity and sexual freedom. Even amid the fear and grief, Asian American AIDS activists created an infrastructure of care that centered the most stigmatized and provided diverse immigrant communities with the health resources and information they needed. Without a formal blueprint, these young organizers often had to be creative and agitat...

Carson Chow is a high-functioning addict. For years, he’s been able to meet the increasing demands from his aging immigrant parents, while hiding his crystal meth use every other weekend. One Friday night, as he’s passed out from a drug binge, he misses thirty-eight phone calls from his father, detailing first the collapse and eventually the death of his mother. Carson has always been close to his mother; he was the only person she confided in when his father had a one-night affair with he...