Summary

In Meghana Mysore's debut short story collection, present-day women and girls of the South Asian diaspora grapple with belonging and are haunted by intergenerational inheritances. Mysore, herself the daughter of Indian immigrants, spins her stories around narrators struggling to assimilate into the surreal world around them. In the world of these stories, ghosts are real--in “Repair Shop,” dead mothers reappear as chiding, broken-down cars; in “Hoarder,” the narrator’s ex-lovers transform into scarves that won't let her go. In another story, a daughter, trapped inside her grief, spends her days Face Timing with her dead father, watching him become a young man she never knew.

At turns absurd and darkly humorous, and sometimes speculative, Mysore’s stories touch on real-life experiences of intergenerational trauma, womanhood, the fluidity of desire and longing, and coming home to one’s body. Her characters have faced violences small and large, holding losses that bind them to their pasts and weigh them down in daily life. Each of these stories contains an experience of transformation, be it small or monumental for these women, who find spaces of freedom and delight within their circumstances.

Contents

Hoarder
Kerosene
In Lamplight You Are Made Whole
A Sweater for You
The Healing Quotient
Blood and Bone
Harshal
A Pure Thing
The Pretend Game
Let All Our Ghosts Depart
Adalita
Soft Still in Pain
Spring Fling
Hair Bright as the Moon
Love Letters
Grief Is Not Our Only Name
Stage Light
Repair Shop
Acknowledgments and Gratitude 

Author

Meghana Mysore’s stories, essays, and poems have appeared in The Yale Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Audacity, and more. She is the winner of the Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction. Mysore has been a Steinbeck Fellow and a scholar at Tin House and Bread Loaf. She holds an MFA from Hollins University and a BA in English from Yale. Mysore is currently a member of the visiting faculty at Bucknell. 

Reviews

"Let All Our Ghosts Depart is a work of wonder. Kaleidoscopic and introspective, this book is a testament to the expansive and transformative power of storytelling. Examining grief and loss, loneliness and intimacy, the longings and desires of women, and the tarnished brightness of being alive, these stories are as multifaceted as memory itself.”

—K-Ming Chang, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Bestiary, Gods of Want, and Organ Meats

"Let All Our Ghost Depart is a beautiful and imaginative collection, filled with characters who are longing to make sense of themselves, their relationships, and the losses that haunt them. With humor and insight, these stories ask us to reflect on what we owe each other and ourselves. A thrilling debut."

—Marian Crotty, author of Near Strangers and What Counts as Love

“In these visionary stories ex-lovers metamorphose into strangling scarves and three generations of women joyfully transform into rainbow-hued squirrels; the dead refuse their deaths even as the living must fight to be alive. Every page offers something gorgeous, savage, and unexpected. Meghana Mysore is an extraordinary talent, and her work is unforgettable.”

—Susan Choi, National Book Award-winning author of Flashlight and Trust Exercise

“In melancholic and poetic prose that reflects the characters’ psychic distance from the worlds they inhabit, the stories in Let All Our Ghosts Depart explore powerful themes through the eyes of women longing to find connection and meaning across several generations of dislocation.”

—Jessie Ren Marshall, author of Women! In! Peril!

“Let All Our Ghosts Depart is an extraordinary collection in its inventiveness and originality, and in its creation of distinct and unique characters. Meghana Mysore's glorious debut explores experiences of the Indian-American diaspora with beauty and precision and humor; she writes about grief and longing like no one else. A magnificent collection." 

—Karen E. Bender, author of The Words of Dr. L. and Other Stories and National Book Award Finalist

"There’s a strangeness born of real life that only fiction can reach; these haunting, wholly original stories illuminate the ways in which we both connect with and miss the most important people in our lives."

 —Sejal Shah, author of How To Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions and the essay collection This Is One Way to Dance