How I Learned

The acclaimed poet’s first collection of short stories illuminates worlds of the unfortunate and lives of the marginalized.

“These fluid stories resonate with both internal and external dialogues in a variety of voices, most of them on the edge in one way or another. A group of prisoners sits around a table making valentines; two friends and former neighbors reunite and realize that there is no way to make up for time lost; a 70-year-old woman flies to Las Vegas hoping to see Frank Sinatra; the impoverished housekeeper to a contessa whose villa is falling apart recounts her boss’s attempts to make money. Although the subjects come from varied ethnic backgrounds, countries and walks of life, the individual tales segue smoothly from one to the next. The story of a cheating high school student who finds a letter his teacher wrote to a child she gave up for adoption many years before is followed by one about a teenager who has sex with a boy and all his friends, which in turn leads into the tale of an illiterate fourth-grade girl. Frym’s (By Ear) background as a poet has trained her well in the use of strong imagery.”

—Publishers Weekly

Publication date: July 1, 1992

Format: Trade Paper

Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5

Page count: 144 pages

ISBN: 9781566890038

“How I Learned is a chorus of strong and lively voices from a San Francisco the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t advertise. Gloria Frym’s street-smart characters makes this a very appealing collection—lean, clean stories, sad, playful, provocative, and unpretentiously wise.”

—Rosellen Brown

“Covering a territory often ignored by fiction writers, Gloria Frym tells stories about people on the margins of life—often in the prisons society builds, sometimes in ones of their own making. She manages, without succumbing to melodrama or sentimentality, to create empathy for these often unsympathetic characters.”

—Jane DeLynn