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Now We Will Be Happy

Amina Gautier

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Imprint: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 09/2014
Pages: 128
Subject: Fiction
eBook ISBN: 9780803256910

DESCRIPTION

Now We Will Be Happy is a prize-winning collection of stories about Afro-Puerto Ricans, U.S.-mainland-born Puerto Ricans, and displaced native Puerto Ricans who are living between spaces while attempting to navigate the unique culture that defines their identity. Amina Gautier's characters deal with the difficulties of bicultural identities in a world that wants them to choose only one.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. Crossing boundaries of comfort, culture, language, race, and tradition in unexpected ways, these characters struggle valiantly and doggedly to reconcile their fantasies of happiness with the realities of their existence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amina Gautier teaches in the department of English at the University of Miami. She is a winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and Southern Review.

REVIEWS

"In these moving, dramatic stories about hunger and fullness, Amina Gautier explores what it means to strive and live in the margins of American hope. Her shrewd compassion brings together characters determined to be happy and shows the cost of happiness with vivid, rich intelligence."—Erin McGraw, author of Better Food for a Better World

"Told with respect, grit, and truth, Now We Will Be Happy is a powerful collection about family, identity, and the sacrifices we make in our pursuits of happiness."—Laura Farmer, Cedar Rapids Gazette

"Gautier's linked stories deftly capture her characters' internal struggles for identity and home."—Leah Strauss, Booklist

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