May-lee Chai, The Minnesota Star Tribune

Elaine Hsieh Chou’s clever and beguiling short story collection “Where Are You Really From” explores issues of identity and belonging with a speculative twist.

In six stories and one novella, Chou takes on Western-centered notions of beauty, mail-order brides, massage parlors, generational trauma and artistic license. She flips stereotypes on their ears, turning her stories into funhouse mirrors that challenge her protagonists — and readers — to navigate worlds that are both strange and all too familiar.

For example, in “Mail Order Love(®),” women from Taiwan literally are shipped to the U.S. in cardboard boxes, after Congress bans all immigration, exploiting a loophole in which mail-order brides are “considered imported foreign goods.” Chou deta

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