Laila Halaby Recommends

The Gangster We Are All Looking For is poetry stretched long to tell a tale of immigration, heartache, and a touch of dysfunction,” Halaby writes. “Narrated by a young Vietnamese girl working herself into American culture, living in San Diego, this is the story of a family coming to grips with its past and present. Le thi diem thuy’s language is graceful, lyrical, and honest, (especially toward the second half of this short book) and you are left with a picture of a family, perhaps what is now a typical California family.”

Laila Halaby is the author of the novel West of the Jordan, which won the PEN Beyond Margins Award and a silver medal for literary fiction from Foreword Magazine.