In 1975 in a working-class barrio in Puerto Rico, Maricarmen spends her time cleaning homes, waiting tables, and avoiding her mother whenever she can. She dreams of a life outside of El Caserío, but as she falls in love she struggles to leave and make a life for herself as violence surrounds the community and encompasses her life. Fifteen years later, Maricarmen and her daughter, Nena, are struck by a tragedy that leads to loss and betrayal. Nena faces survival in a community that once supported her and her family and now isolates her, all while navigating her sexuality, and a tense relationship with her mother. Nena begins to learn that survival is making the choices that her mother never could.
Jaquira Díaz has written for the The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Fader, and her stories, poems, and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. She was also a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and is now a professor at Columbia University.
Because it opens you to a world full of life and keeps you immersed in the lives and trajectory of her characters, emphasizing how difficult it is to break a sad cycle when it’s all you know.