Blood Work and Other Stories

A father's silence. A mother's memory. A brother's grief. In seventeen unforgettable stories, Donald Carreira Ching offers a powerful and deeply intimate portrait of contemporary life in Hawai'i.On the Windward side of O'ahu, change moves fast—developers buy up neighborhoods, locals move away, and families struggle to hold on to what's left. But beneath the surface of each loss is something more enduring: memory, love, and the quiet acts of resilience that refuse to be forgotten. A son unearths a family's buried history through an old VHS tape. Friends haunted by war confront their pain in backyards and barroom confessions. A daughter wrestles with the cost of care as her mother begins to forget.Against a backdrop of economic hardship, housing instability, cultural transition, and environmental loss, Carreira Ching writes with empathy about the complexities of identity, family, and belonging. His characters live in a Hawai'i far removed from tourist postcards, navigating grief, displacement, and intergenerational trauma. Still, in the overlooked corners of the islands, they hold tight to the connections that root them in community.Blood Work and Other Stories showcases Donald Carreira Ching's remarkable range and emotional insight, securing his place as one of the most compelling voices writing from and about Hawai'i today. Through formally inventive and emotionally resonant storytelling, Carreira Ching captures the tension, beauty, and fragility of a community in transition. These are stories of what we carry, what we inherit, and what we leave behind. Read more