I find that this book pulled me in two directions. On one hand, I loved it because so many of the stories were from the point of view of people well outside of stereotypical white western American Mormon culture. (One story is about a black Zimbabwean man who has to travel into a Rwandan war zone to dedicate the grave of someone killed in genocidal violence.)

On the other hand, I like to read stories that have some sort of tangible plot to them, and many of the short stories in this volume felt like "scenes" or "moments" without any sort of larger structure.

I liked the final novella, I think largely because it had more of a plot, and I wish that all of the short stories had been of a similar length and development. (But would I prefer to silence the unique voices of the short stories if they could not be expanded into something larger? I'm not sure.) ( )