From the particular to the universal: Cross-cultural stories

Displacement – often by outside force, rarely by personal choice – haunts Meron Hadero’s superb debut short story collection, “A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times,” which won the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and hits bookstores this week. Like many of her characters, Hadero is all too familiar with dislocation. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she arrived in the United States as a child via Germany, and later