Four new writers show what makes Toronto the city it has become.

Sultan Ameerali, born in Toronto to Sri Lankan parents, chronicles the hilarious and shocking absurdities of the "brown man" making do in white Canada through bottom feeder jobs and heartless relationships.

Jennifer Lee, produces wry, low-key tales about living across cultural boundaries, first in southern Ontario, then during a year in China, her parents' homeland.

Kwai Li, takes us to the tiny marginalized community of Chinese in Tangra, a suburb of post-colonial Calcutta, where as a six-year-old she stood watch for the cops as her mother turned a tannery by day into a moonshine operation by night.

Rosa Veltri, the daughter of Italian-born parents in Toronto's west end, writes sparkling and heartbreaking stories of immigrants who struggle for dignity in a hellish suburban fruit market.

Sultan Ameerali

"BK Variety: A Story in Two Parts"
"Condom Mania"
"Crap Lobby"
"My Valentine's Day Rant"
"One Night in a Basement Apartment"
SkyDome: Death of a Thousand Cuts"
Tattoo--Blow Job Story"

Jennifer Lee

"Beijing Heat"
"Chinese Christmas"
"Copenhagen Mermaid"
"Derrick"
"Easter Lilies"
"The Red-Brick Path"

Kwai Li

"A Fish Who Invited Itself to Dinner"
"The East is Red"
"Farewell, Calcutta"
"The Godfather of Chinatown"
"Long Live Mao Tse Tung"
"Police Raid on Moonshine Pond"
"Woody and Mei Ling"

Rosa Veltri

"The Bakery"
"A Ballerina and a Nurse"
"Christmas Party"
"Cotton Undershirt"
"Half a Case of Oranges"
"A Heater and a Fan"
"Maria Florentina"
"Tipper's Fruit Market"

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Price $40

Publisher: Toronto: Life Rattle Press, 2004
Series: Life rattle new writers series 1200 5266 17
Numbers: Canadiana: 2004-900896X
ISBN: 978-1-897161-57-9
Classification: LC Call no.:PS8321 K49 2004 Dewey: C813/.010806 22
Subjects: Short stories, Canadian (English) Canadian Fiction (English)—21st century