'IN the comic-tragic story ‘Lucky Ticket’, the narrator, a genial disabled old man, sells lottery tickets on a street corner in bustling Saigon. In ‘Mekong Love’, two young people in a restrictive society find a way to consummate their relationship—in an extraordinary tropical landscape.
'In ‘Abu Dhabi Gently’, a story of dreams and disappointment, of camaraderie and disillusionment, a migrant worker leaves Vietnam to earn money in the UAE in order to be able to marry his fiancée. ‘White Washed’ depicts a strained friendship between two students in Melbourne, the Vietnamese narrator and a white girl.
'What does it mean to be Asian? What does it mean to be white? And what makes up identity? In Lucky Ticket, Joey Bui introduces a diverse range of characters, all with distinctive voices, and makes us think differently about mixed-race relationships, difficulties between family generations, war, dislocation and identity.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'In Lucky Ticket, a collection of 12 stories, Vietnamese-Australian author Joey Bui acts as a ventriloquist for a number of voices: men and women across the age spectrum, with several tales based on interviews with Vietnamese refugees around the world.' (Introduction)
'“She wrote weird stories with no endings,” one character observes of another in Joey Bui’s debut. In a way, this could be said of Bui’s writing, too – Lucky Ticket is a strange and spellbinding collection of short stories with question-mark conclusions, presenting glimpses into the ordinary and extraordinary lives of migrants. These stories often finish on an image, a thought or a reflection, rather than offering any closure – they are about lives in flux, ever changing and not so easily defined. Even when diving into matters of great emotion, Bui largely avoids sentimentality, writing with a pragmatism that will feel familiar to anyone raised in a migrant family.' (Introduction)
'“She wrote weird stories with no endings,” one character observes of another in Joey Bui’s debut. In a way, this could be said of Bui’s writing, too – Lucky Ticket is a strange and spellbinding collection of short stories with question-mark conclusions, presenting glimpses into the ordinary and extraordinary lives of migrants. These stories often finish on an image, a thought or a reflection, rather than offering any closure – they are about lives in flux, ever changing and not so easily defined. Even when diving into matters of great emotion, Bui largely avoids sentimentality, writing with a pragmatism that will feel familiar to anyone raised in a migrant family.' (Introduction)
'In Lucky Ticket, a collection of 12 stories, Vietnamese-Australian author Joey Bui acts as a ventriloquist for a number of voices: men and women across the age spectrum, with several tales based on interviews with Vietnamese refugees around the world.' (Introduction)
