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.