Buying Options

Learn more

Read and Listen for Free

Learn More

OR

Kindle Price: $1.99

Promotions apply when you purchase

Add Audible narration to your purchase for just $0.00

Deliver to your Kindle Library

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

The Weddings (Inheritance collection) by [Alexander Chee]

Follow the Author

Alexander Chee

The Weddings (Inheritance collection) Kindle Edition

by Alexander Chee (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

387 ratings

Book 5 of 5: Inheritance

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$1.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles $1.99 to buy
Audiobook
$0.00 Free with your Audible trial

For Jack Cho, a fortysomething gay man, being able to marry someone he loves is so unfamiliar it’s terrifying. Then a wedding invitation from a college friend brings about a collision with those fears—and his own secret history.

Jack and his new boyfriend, Caleb, are attending the wedding of Jack’s estranged straight friend Scott. No sooner do the guests start to mingle than questions arise about relationships, tradition, Jack’s feelings for the groom, and what’s at stake as he navigates daunting territory, both new and old. In this wry and surprising short story, award-winning author Alexander Chee extends an invitation to the party—and awakening—of a lifetime.

Alexander Chee’s The Weddings is part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust.

Print length

47 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Amazon Original Stories
Publication date

December 19, 2019
File size

5097 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

All 5 for you in this series See full series

See included books

Total Price: $5.95

By clicking on above button, you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use

Alice Hoffman
3,843
Kindle Edition
in 45-Minute Literature & Fiction Short Reads
1 offer from $0.99
Julie Orringer
804
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.99
Anthony Marra
504
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.99
Jennifer Haigh
500
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $0.99
Sonya Larson
216
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $1.99
Jane Smiley
191
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $1.99

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alexander Chee is the author of Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. He is a Whiting Award winner, contributing editor at the New Republic, and editor at large at VQR, and his essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and The Best American Essays, among others.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07ZP386NQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amazon Original Stories (December 19, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 19, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5097 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 47 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #13,563 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1 in Kindle Singles: LGBTQ+
- #2 in 90-Minute LGBTQ+ Short Reads
- #8 in Literary Short Stories

Customer Reviews:
387 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Alexander Chee

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

ALEXANDER CHEE won a Whiting Award for his first novel, Edinburgh, and is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and NPR, among others, and he is a Contributing Editor at The New Republic. He lives in New York City.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5

387 global ratings

5 star		33%
4 star		30%
3 star		22%
2 star		7%
1 star		8%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Dee

Oh my 😳

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 14, 2023

Verified Purchase

This was an interesting and sad read, and it really shows how some men are subjected to living lives according to their families instead of being true to themselves. I hope Scott gets out but it really looks like he won’t he will forever be in the closet and as for Jack , I hope he will eventually be happy with Caleb and even their story gives me doubts that they will be happy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

Jack is reunited with an old friend / lover at the other's wedding. It seems that Scott will wed a woman, when he obviously prefers Jack. I guess he chose the race he preferred but couldn't live his full truth. Sad.

Helpful

Mindo'ermatter

Most Disconnected Installment of the Series

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 24, 2020

Verified Purchase

Perhaps this last and the longest of the five-week "Inheritance" collection was included because of the ethnic or national heritages many deal with as they confront cultural expectations imposed upon successive generations, who might not feel the same inherited connections.

This short novella details the emotions of mixed relationships within different weddings and the drama of misunderstood friendships and interactions often exposed within extended marriage celebrations. Although well written and intense, the storyline combines two subplots that highlight the conflicting motives of personal independence and matrimonial commitment, which often has a longer journey and transition that many expect.

Told here is the personal saga of sorting through past relationships to identify what was real or just an illusion. This becomes even more complex when friendships are tested across different cultural expectations.

The strongest part if this installment was the unintentional conflicts possible between cultural and personal loyalties. The story's weakness lies in the lack of resolution of the subplots and the ambiguity of the uncertain ending. Perhaps too, the story's length compared with the series' other stories attempted to include too much for a short story yet not long enough to adequately develop all the elements sufficiently.

Audible's narration that accompanied this fictional work was adequate but not memorable.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kevin Tang

Can't wait for a Jack Cho novel!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

What I love most about Alexander Chee's Jack Cho stories is that it shows how someone like him can slip through the cracks between the racial alienation of queer American life and the hetero-claustrophobia of Asian American family life. These communities have given Jack the only people he has ever loved, but they've failed over and over to hold onto him.

There is so much tenderness and intelligence in how Chee inhabits Jack's mind. Parts of 'The Weddings' describe a specific kind of covert queer heartbreak with such precision that I had to look up from the page and blink for a long time. Over and over, Jack has had to mourn versions of people who never really existed. There's no community that gathers around his type of grief, so he crawls through vast years of loneliness, and all along the way people say such weird, baffling things to him.

That's another thing: I love how Chee notices that our most vulnerable moments are often so full of hilarious, awkward absurdity. Right as Jack's about to plead the dignity of his feelings to a man, the object of his affection starts talking about the lack of dicks in Fresno. Why, of all thing, did he choose to say this particular sentence? Jack's mind tries to puzzle this together, and before he knows it, all possibility of a real conversation has been thwarted. We put ourselves through such mortifying situations to find love, and people say such weird things to us along the way.

I don't think I've ever read fiction that treats people like Jack with such warm, intelligent attention, and I honestly can't wait for a novel about his life.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amirah Garces

Interesting

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 20, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book frustrated me so much because we don't get an answer. We never really learn what exactly happened, no details of the past relationships Scott had, I assumed Jack and Caleb wouldn't tie the not and I wanted to just know MORE!!!!. Maybe that's the point? In real life, we won't always get answers, closure etc.

This talks about the fetishism of Korean culture, coming out as gay, being second generation Korean, not feeling Korean enough and we get the story told from a middle aged man which I realized I've never ewad from that prospective so it was really great because Jack grew up in the 80's/90's when gay men couldn't marry. I enjoyed this though I hate not knowing EVERYTHING

Helpful

Jonathan Parks-Ramage

An instant queer classic.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 23, 2019

Verified Purchase

An instant queer classic. The titular weddings in Chee’s story could not be more different—one fabulously gay, complete with male strippers who are both performers and friends of the grooms, the other a stuffy evangelical affair where the queers are relegated to the “gay table.” The contrast between these two events is the source of much hilarity and heartbreak, with Chee’s wry wit resonating throughout every page. Yet underneath the incisive observations and karaoke showdowns, deeper questions persist. What does marriage mean and who is it for? How do LGBTQ people make room for themselves in a heteronormative tradition? Is it even necessary to do so?

But these weddings serve as more than a vehicle to explore the complexities of queer commitment. They are also a backdrop for one of the most compelling character studies in recent fiction. Jack Cho is queer, Korean American, and contemplating what marriage might look like for himself and his partner Caleb. As he navigates the tricky emotional terrain of these two weddings, Jack reflects on past relationships, his personal identity, and how our lives are shaped by the people we love. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and stunningly original, The Weddings is required reading from one of contemporary literature’s most essential voices.

Buying Options

OR

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the Author

The Weddings (Inheritance collection) Kindle Edition

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Alexander Chee

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.