Strangers I Know, A Novel

"Durastanti casts the universal drama of the family as the sieve through which the selfwoman, artist, daughteris filtered and known." Ocean VuongA work of fiction about being a stranger in your own family and life.Every family has its own mythology, but in this family none of the myths match up. Claudias mother says she met her husband when she stopped him from jumping off a bridge. Her father says it happened when he saved her from an attempted robbery. Both parents are deaf but couldnt be more different; they cant even agree on how they met, much less who needed saving.Into this unlikely yet somehow inevitable union, our narrator is born. She comes of age with her brother in this strange, and increasingly estranged, household split between a small village in southern Italy and New York City. Without even sign language in common their parents have not bothered to teach them family...