Ling Ma figured out how to write a short story collection, where each narrator and message roots itself into the reader. From themes of love, loss, and learning, you’re bound to find something that resonates with you. As I read these stories, I found myself pausing a lot, stunned, to find characters like myself, my mother, my sister, grandmother alive in these pages. A glimmering work of art is what Ling Ma gives you in Bliss Montage. 
 
"Ice cream is my favorite food. I write these words in my journal my mother gives me to record my first days in the US. English is just a play language to me, the words tethered to their meanings by the loosest, most tenuous connections. So it's easy to lie. I tell the truth in Chinese, I make up stories in English... It is the language in which I have nothing to lose, even if they don't believe a thing I say" (Ma 174).