Like almost all Hungarian-Canadian writers and poets, Miska draws comparisons between his childhood experiences in Hungary and the realities of life in Canada. Nostalgia is definitely one element in these comparisons, however, Miska refers repeatedly not only to the vices of the communist regime but also to those of the conservative prewar system. Also, the comparisons are never painted  in black and white. Miska notes much that is positive in Canadian life  and identifies with his new homeland  - perhaps more than any other Hungarian-Canadian writer or poet. After all, he came to this country at the age of twenty-four, it was here that he developed into a popular and successful immigrant story-teller.

John Miska builds the majority of his short stories on a conflict between either different ideas or different human attitudes. Paradoxes in immigrant attitudes appear contrasted in A templomjáró krónikája (The chronicles of a churchgoer) and A könyves boltban (In the bookstore). In the former, a sentimental attachment to the memories of the old country characterizes a misfit dreamer while success and a materialistic attitude are attributes of the reckless careerist. In the latter story, a culturally uneducated political right-wing hack lectures two book-loving Hungarian-Canadians on how all present-day Hungarian writers are communists, in a particularly satirical dialogue which Miska, the bibliophile librarian, truly savours. Anglo-Canadians’ traditional suspicion of Eastern-European newcomers during the late 1950s is depicted in Takarító (The cleaner). In Faulkner órája(Faulkner’s clock) there is a bizarre allusion to Canadian-American relations in the example of a travelling peddler who sells cheap items as antiques to good, naive Canadians and who turns out to be from south of the border.

Miska’s most successful short story is Hazajáró, in which the author describes an old-time Hungarian-Canadian communist’s disappointment with conditions in socialist Hungary when he visits it after many decades. Comrade Máriás, who is way behind his time with his socialist ideals of the 1920s and 1930s is the paradoxical epitome of Canadian freedom. He realizes on his return to Hungary that there is just one way of being a communist over here, while in Canada he may choose his own way: he can sing the Internationale with his old party chums on socialist holidays and own two apartment buildings at the same time. Typically, his concern for the betterment of the working class is not paralleled by any concern about individuals. His daughters Hungarian is eroding, and his tenants curse him as he neglects the buildings in sheer contempt for private property. The fine irony and the thorough knowledge of the paradoxes of Hungarian-Canadian life make Hazajáró perhaps the best short story written in this country in Hungarian. While taking an unusual perspective in choosing a specimen of the Hungarian-Canadian community otherwise never represented – a communist – Miska nevertheless reflects on the general phenomenon of immigrant nostalgia.

A diplomás  (The graduate) is also an exceptionally fine psychological story about the frustrating evening after the graduation ceremony of a young Hungarian Canadian who, after heroic struggle for acculturation and acceptance, has just received his Canadian university diploma. Like other stories by John Miska, it is partly retrospective and also characterized by a touch of irony and much understanding.