Title: End of Service
Author: Gabriela Lee
Genre: science fiction, near future
This is the part of my 100 Short Stories in 2014 challenge. This story is also part of the crowdfunded anthology Kaleidoscope, that I helped fund.
Aya just lost her mom, who has been living as a migrant worker, somewhere else. Her mom has never been home much and that is making the grief process harder on Aya, who does not know what to think and feel.
This is a hard story to talk about without spoiling it. But I can say that is all about grief and absent parents and the dilemmas of migrant workers who leave their family behind to give them a better future.
Aya do not know how to feel about her mother in death just like she never knew how to talk to her mother in life. The traditional grief rites surrounding the funeral are not helping her and she feels very alone and isolated away from the normality of school and her friends. She misses her online presence as something normal to do.
I do not think will talk more about what the story is about because that would spoil the story. Ok, what did I then think about the story, that should be the next logical question, should it? I liked the themed that it explored, it was interesting. It did however not really connect with me emotionally – but that might because I read it while being rather tired. I woke up way too early this morning and couldn’t fall to sleep again, so I read a story.
The stats
Published: August 2014 by Twelfth Planet Press
Anthology: Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories
Read: 6. August, 2014
Length: Short story
Format: e-book
The author: female, poc, Philippines
The protagonist: Aya, female, teenager, strait, poc, Filipino.