“Talking with Boys” by Tayyba Kanwal

This is a collection of short stories, spanning a wide variety of characters and settings, all related to the Pakistani diaspora. I picked this one up not knowing much about it, but the title and cover intrigued me. I was pleasantly surprised. The stories were well-written and I never stopped reading one midway. There’s a tiny bit of overlap between them and a sliver of magical realism here and there, but they mostly read as either contemporary or historical fiction. The stories cover the beauty and stress of familial bonds and friendships, breaking with tradition, immigration, (labor) exploitation and inequality, finding strength and security in both your surroundings and within yourself. There’s a lot about cultural and religious expectations, about their pressure and what to embrace and what to let go. About bearing the consequences of that too. What does one owe oneself, or others, and what do the circumstances allow? Some of the stories have a personal, close-up point of view,…