Short stories by Amina Gautier.

Listing 21 stories.

A young Black girl confronts her overbearing mother's poverty and her lack of a father when she is coerced into attending a program intended to make her a "professional" member of society who can break the cycle of poverty.

A girl visits Puerto Rico to bond with her grandfather, and they find that music brings them together. After she returns home to the US, the grandfather struggles to converse with her over the phone.

A woman leaves her daughter behind to start a new life with her husband and sons. She begins to hang around her sister-in-law's store, but a customer's request tests their friendship.

An aging Puerto Rican woman searches her bodega for a letter from her distant son, and recalls her own desire to escape her restrictive life in America.

After their father leaves, two young brothers struggle to remain allies when one of them is bullied and accused of being gay.

When a black teenage girl at a private school gets invited to a party by a wealthy white student, she struggles to navigate the divide between their world and her own.

A young girl engages in a private affair with a much older man to prove that she is a woman, and in doing so, feels joy at the secret she is hiding from her watchful mother.

A Black teenage mother wants to visit her daughter's father, but she struggles to get her family to help watch the baby at home.

A young woman returns home from college for the first time in years to attend to her dying grandmother, whose only wish is for some homemade flan. Along the way, the young woman is forced to confront her parents' flawed relationship and the neglectful environment in which she grew up.

A young man frustrated with living at his in-laws' house is triggered by gifted doll and lashes out at his wife.