Katy Family: Stories

by Gemini Wahhaj

Pub Date: April 14, 2025, ISBN Paperback: 978-1956907131

Combining the powers of speculation of Kazuo Ishiguro and the sharp social critique of Aravind Adiga, this collection offers readers the ultimate experience of global fiction, stories bound and shaped by Katy, Texas, a place made by oil and capitalism. The stories weave between Bangladeshi characters experiencing the reality of the immigrant experience in America and those still in Bangladesh, wishing for the mythos of the American dream. Katy, an oil-rich suburb of Houston, is the background and ultimate symbol of global capitalism. The stories deliver the reality and impact of isolation, materialism, and the looming climate disaster. With sharp intelligence and humor, Wahhaj explores the oil industry’s destructive effect on those who live within Texas and those far beyond its borders. Elizabeth McKenzie, author of MacGregor Tells the World and Stop That Girl, says, “Wahhaj’s stories are addictive–richly observed, thrumming with sly depictions of ambition and hypocrisy, painting a luminous panorama of an American subculture in all its comic and tender complexity.”

About the author

Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the novel The Children of This Madness (7.13 Books, 2023), winner of the Bronze award in IPPY South regional category, and the short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, April 2025). Her fiction is in Granta, Third Coast, River Styx, Chicago Quarterly Review, and numerous other magazines. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she received the James A. Michener award for fiction judged by Claudia Rankine and the Cambor/Inprint fellowship. She is an associate editor at Iron Horse Literary Review. She is Associate Professor, English at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas.

Paperback

$20.00

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