Alexandra Chang Is Compelled by Constraint
When I last interviewed 5 Under 35 honoree Alexandra Chang, we spoke about her debut novel, Days of Distraction. This was in February of 2020. Our conversation could not help but drift from the text to the impending apocalypse.
Chang’s short story collection, Tomb Sweeping, arrives at a slightly less cataclysmic time. This is to the benefit of readers, who will find a special voice they might have missed during the early lockdown days, a voice that Jason Mott—the National Book Award winner for Hell of a Book—describes aptly as “haunting and mesmerizing.”
has a prevailing mood that is present in the best story collections, a sense of completeness. The stories were written over the course of nine years, and, individually, each reads with the effortlessness achieved
