Faith: Stories: A Powerful International Short Story Anthology on Faith, Doubt, and Belief - Softcover

Curtis, C. Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0618378243 ISBN 13: 9780618378241

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2003

Synopsis

Expanding the conversation begun in God: Stories, this important gathering of writers explores the diverse world of faith in all its guises: Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Quaker, and Confucian beliefs, as well as Jewish and Christian ones. From James A. Michener to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, from Amy Tan to Hanif Kureishi, Faith: Stories investigates the boundaries of faith and ritual in everyday life. In one story, a one-eyed Chinese child learns that all heavens are not the same. In another, a wealthy moneylender finds a relic of the Prophet Muhammad and decides to keep it instead of returning it to its shrine. In a third, a father whose son begins to blindly preach the Koran becomes engaged in a fanaticism of his own.
With subtlety and surprise, wit and candor, these stories explore issues of faith such as sacrifice, superstition, myth, and disbelief. Together they form an illuminating prism of the religious experience in today's world.

About this title

About the Author

C. Micheal Curtis, senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, has edited three anthologies: American Stories: Fiction from The Atlantic Monthly, Contempory New England Short Stories, and Contemporary California Short Stories. He lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

In this collection of short stories about faith, Curtis, the fiction editor of the Atlantic Monthly, plunges the reader into a sometimes baffling, often disconcerting world of belief. Unlike the sister volume, God, whose stories were rooted in Protestant, Catholic and Jewish traditions, this sequel includes entries that reflect Buddhist, Muslim, Confucian and Hindu views. The stories are often beautifully descriptive, like R‚my Rougeau's gorgeously rich "Cello," about a provocative encounter between Cistercian and Buddhist monks. Salman Rushdie writes of the perils of faith commitment in "The Prophet's Hair," and Tova Reich looks at the reverberations in a Jewish family when the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors decides to become a Catholic nun in "The Third Generation." In the poignant "God's Goodness," Marjorie Kemper unfolds the story of Ling Tan, who finds her Christian faith put to the test when she nurses a teenage boy with a terminal illness. Other contributors include Reynolds Price, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, James Michener and Jessamyn West. Although most of the writers are contemporary, there are a few historical authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Katherine Anne Porter). The offerings are varied and diverse; believers are portrayed very realistically, even unsympathetically, and the power of religion to provide hope and meaning often takes a back seat to the darker side of belief. These beautifully written stories provide a useful platform for reflection and discussion of what it means to have faith.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* The 24 stories in Faith: Stories follow Atlantic editor Curtis' well-received God: Stories (1998), a collection aimed at liberal Christians. Curtis casts an even more ecumenical net here, including such stories as Salman Rushdie's "The Prophet's Hair," Hanif Kureishi's "My Son the Fanatic," and Yukio Mishima's "The Priest and His Love." But he also gathers such American standards as Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," as well as contempory tales such as Amy Tan's "Fishers of Men" and Alice Walker's "The Welcome Table." All of the stories are really more about faith as a literary conceit than "the substance of things hoped for," but this is a flawless collection and will be welcomed by readers weary of the rigidity found in most Christian fare. John Mort
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

This book began to take shape almost immediately after the publication of
God: Stories, its partner-in-reflection. Several stories in the present volume
could not be included in the earlier book, both because I ran out of room and
because they seemed, somehow, not to fit. Once God: Stories was
published, and reviewers began to tell me what I had failed to consider in
putting it together, I began to realize that I had missed a number of mind-
broadening possibilities. In choosing stories rooted in Protestant, Catholic,
and Jewish traditions, I had unwittingly excluded more than half of the world's
believers.
Faith: Stories, at least in part, is an attempt to close this gap.
And while such an attempt to be inclusive necessarily exposes the
limitations of the exercise, this book attempts an encounter with spiritual
traditions unremarked in its predecessor. I've included two stories—sections
of novels, as it happens—that touch on matters fundamental to Quaker
traditions and lore; other stories concern Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, and
Confucian values and ideas. While none of these stories intend or
accomplish a full appreciation of the traditions from which they arise, they do
underline instructive truths about the strength and transformative power of
diverse faith experiences.
Faith, of course, occurs in many forms, and with various
consequences. We tell ourselves we need to believe in something beyond
our own basic wish for survival and comfort, and readers should not be
surprised to find here a scattering of stories about the stare-down between
rationalism and steadfast faith in sacred agency. Hanif Kureishi's "My Son
the Fanatic" and Salman Rushdie's "The Prophet's Hair" are examples. The
same might be said of Khushwant Singh's "The Mark of Vishnu" or Marjorie
Kemper's remarkable "God's Goodness." In some stories faith is disorienting,
even crippling, while in others it provides a gentle and unexpected respite
from the hard realities of lives taken over by pain and disappointment.
God: Stories was intended, among other things, as a resource for
reading and assessment by church groups like the one at the West Concord
Union Church, in Concord, Massachusetts, where many of its stories were
discussed well before they reappeared in book form. Faith: Stories will, I
hope, extend that exercise, and its broader range ought to invite a
conversation about ways in which faith commitments both divide and
strengthen us.

C. Michael Curtis

Copyright © 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Introduction copyright ©
2003 by C. Michael Curtis. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
Company.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618378243
• ISBN 13: 9780618378241
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336