The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Whether Vietnam or America, whether 1963 or 2008, the narrators of Genaro Kỳ Lý Smith’s stories grieve the ghosts they have lost, and even yearn to resurrect those before their time has come. These stories are unified by the narrators’ inability to articulate what is lost, and so they must resort to a simple action. However, there is hope, for as Ly Minh, a nine-year-old narrator from “The False Flight of Angels” best put it in this collection’s epigraph, “Heaven affords us the vocabulary, the languages necessary to communicate with the grieving, with the angels, with God Himself, and even with the beautiful ones who are not yet born.”