Elaine Chiew’s debut short story collection, The Heartsick Diaspora, lives up to its title. The stories primarily take place in three cities with large Asian populations: New York, London and Singapore. They star ghosts, tiger moms, sous chefs and even a writing group of “ethnic writers” (a term she uses tongue-in-cheek). The Heartsick Diaspora is an ambitious attempt to capture the breadth of the Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese diaspora through time and in three of the cities (among others) in which Chiew has lived.