31 Days of Stories 2010, Day 2: “The Orphan” by Nell Freudenberger ...

... Village art movement in China is juxtaposed with the typically Western peccadilloes of the Travers family: the matriarch's affair with her husband's brother, her son's relationship with a Latina girl from Echo Park, and her daughter's incipient eating disorder. ... In the opening scene, Mandy calls Alice from a bakery; all Alice knows about Thailand is that it is “somewhere below and to the left of China” and that “in Thailand people make phone calls from bakeries. ...