Peacocks of Instagram

Abstract

Peacocks of Instagram is a short story collection that refuses typical immigrant narratives. In the title story of the collection, a middle-aged woman displays her bright brilliance while selling peacock accessories on the internet and holding a minimum wage job serving coffee to the ordinary. Rahel is the story of a woman who does not decamp to the sidelines of an affair but takes up space and spans decades and continents living her life as variously as possible. In Bestsellers, a divorced woman living in a windowless basement transforms pity into small, disfigured figurines and sells them back to those who would feel pity for her to make a small fortune. Centering women who live and think and feel, these stories question what it means to be safe, to feel safe, to survive.