Life Ceremony: Stories

Murata (Convenience Store Woman; Earthlings) delves once more into the deepest corners of our hearts and minds in her first short-story collection to be translated into English. The characters populating these 12 stories experience growth, fear, hope, and confusion through an off-balance lens that challenges listeners’ perceptions of human behavior. If it’s normal to wear clothing made from animal products, why not clothing made from human products? What makes a family average or separates a person from an object? Are our personalities truly our own, or are we a collection of the traits others assign to us? The narrators of these stories (Emily Woo Zeller, Eunice Wong, Natalie Naudus, Nancy Wu, Jeena Yi, and Pun Bandhu) create an audio landscape both intimate and otherworldly. Using precisely calculated tones and cadence, they evoke the cultural underpinnings of the characters while making them relatable to a world of listeners. Each main character stands alone in her story, but all are united by the narration into a chorus challenging the way we think about social conventions.