The Best That You Can Do: Stories

Primarily told from the perspective of women & children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers & families in Puerto Rico, these stories explore the cultural confusion of being one person in two places—of having a mother who wants your father & his language to stay on his island but sends you there because you need to know your family. Loudly & joyfully filled with Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, & budding romances, these stories are saturated in summer nostalgia, & place readers at the center of the table to enjoy family traditions & holidays: the resplendent & universal language of survival for displaced or broken families. 

Refusing to shy away from dysfunction, loss, obligation, or interrogating Black & Latinx heritages “If we flip the channels fast enough, we can turn almost anyone Puerto Rican, blurring black & white into Boricua.” Gautier's stories feature New York neighborhoods made of island nations living with seasonal & perpetual displacement. Like Justin Torres’ We the Animals, or Quiara Alegria Hudes’ My Broken Language, it’s the characters-in-becoming—flanked by family & rich with detail—that animate each story with special frequencies, especially for readers grappling split-identities themselves.

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Amina Gautier, Ph.D., is the author of three short story collections: At-Risk, Now We Will Be Happy, & The Loss of All Lost Things. Gautier is the recipient of the Blackwell Prize, the Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, the International Latino Book Award, the Flannery O’Connor Award, & the Phillis Wheatley Award in Fiction. For her body of work, she has received the PEN/MALAMUD Award for Excellence in the Short Story.