Now We Will Be Happy

"Now We Will Be Happy" is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S.-mainland-born Puerto Ricans, & displaced native Puerto Ricans who are living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that defines Puerto Rican identity. 

Amina Gautier’s characters deal with the difficulties of bicultural identities in a world that wants them to choose only one. a The characters in "Now We Will Be Happy" are as unpredictable as they are human. A teenage boy leaves home in search of the mother he hasn't seen since childhood; a granddaughter is sent across the ocean to broker peace between her relatives; a widow seeks to die by hurricane; a married woman takes a bathtub voyage with her lover; a proprietress who is the glue that binds her neighborhood cannot hold on to her own son; a displaced wife develops a strange addiction to candles.a a Crossing boundaries of comfort, culture, language, race, and tradition in unexpected ways, these characters struggle valiantly & doggedly to reconcile their fantasies of happiness with the realities of their existence."

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“Primarily told from the perspective of women & children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers & families in Puerto Rico, the stories in The Best That You Can Do explore the cultural confusion of being one person in two places. Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize Amina Gautier brings an incredible attention to the interior lives of her characters; her work is consistently filled with moments of nostalgia & discontent, as she refuses to shy away from the problems of individual & collective displacement.” — Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books