by Achy Obejas
First published 2014
These characters carry the weight of displacement in their bodies. A lesbian daughter of Cuban exiles navigates her identity between two worlds. Gay men face the specter of AIDS while seeking connection. Addicts fight for another day of survival on society's edges. Each person in these interconnected stories wrestles with questions of home and belonging. They are immigrants, outcasts, and survivors who refuse to disappear quietly. Obejas draws from her own experience as a Cuban exile to illuminate their struggles. Her characters move through Chicago and Miami, through family kitchens and hospital rooms, searching for the kind of love that makes wholeness possible. They confront rejection from families who cannot accept their sexuality, navigate systems designed to exclude them, and build chosen families from fellow survivors. The stories pulse with the particular pain of those caught between cultures, between the country they left and the one that will not fully embrace them.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, lgbt
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, identity-crisis
Setting: Chicago, Cuba, Miami
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
133 pages · Kindle Edition · Cleis Press
Content warnings: addiction, homophobia