‘Now we will be happy’: Standalone stories are strongest together

One of the characters in Amina Gautier's remarkable new collection of short stories, 'Now We Will Be Happy” (University of Nebraska Press, $16.95), found herself a victim of teasing when she was 10 years old. 'I had a black mother and a Puerto Rican father, and I didn't know what that made me.” The young woman goes to her grandmother in tears.

'She didn't ask me what happened. She just shook her head at me. ‘Don't you know who you are? ... You are my granddaughter, my nieta. You are everybody's daughter. You are the conquistador, the Indian, and the slave, struggling to be one.'”

In these 11 linked stories, Gautier explores the complexities of being Puerto Rican and how living within a family divided by geography, culture, and language can both bring relatives closer together and tear them apart.

She also explores the difficulties of pursuing happiness, both in the United States and Puerto Rico. In 'Bodega,” 'Only Son,” and 'Palabras,” we see a family who sacrificed and struggled to maintain a small store in New York, only to have their son reject their ideas of happiness and pursue his own - back in Puerto Rico. In each story, Gautier shifts perspective from the matriarch to the son to the grandson; the combination makes each story larger - and more complex - as we come to know the motivations and frustrations of each generation.

While the stories are strong on their own, it's the small and large connections between them that brings the collection to another level. Read together, these are the stories not just of one family or one neighborhood, but two islands - Manhattan and Puerto Rico - and one multifaceted identity.

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.