The Best That You Can Do: Stories
Amina Gautier
Jan 2024 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by LaNecia Edmonds
headphones
Audiobook
6 hr 33 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
Want a free 39 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, a collection of short stories that elaborate the realities of a diasporic existence, split identities, and the beautiful potency of meaningful connections
Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers and families in Puerto Rico, these stories explore the confusion of being one person in two places—of having a mother who wants your father and his language to stay on his island but sends you there because you need to know your family. Loudly and joyfully filled with Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, and budding romances, these stories are saturated in summer nostalgia, and place listeners at the center of the table to enjoy family traditions and holidays: the resplendent and universal language of survival for displaced or broken families.
Refusing to shy away from dysfunction, loss, obligation, or interrogating Black and Latinx heritages, Gautier's stories feature New York neighborhoods made of island nations living with seasonal and perpetual displacement. Like Justin Torres's We the Animals or Quiara Alegria Hudes's My Broken Language, it's the characters-in-becoming—flanked by family and rich with detail—that animate each story with special frequencies, especially for listeners grappling with split-identities themselves.
Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are tethered to fathers and families in Puerto Rico, these stories explore the confusion of being one person in two places—of having a mother who wants your father and his language to stay on his island but sends you there because you need to know your family. Loudly and joyfully filled with Cousins, Aunts, Grandparents, and budding romances, these stories are saturated in summer nostalgia, and place listeners at the center of the table to enjoy family traditions and holidays: the resplendent and universal language of survival for displaced or broken families.
Refusing to shy away from dysfunction, loss, obligation, or interrogating Black and Latinx heritages, Gautier's stories feature New York neighborhoods made of island nations living with seasonal and perpetual displacement. Like Justin Torres's We the Animals or Quiara Alegria Hudes's My Broken Language, it's the characters-in-becoming—flanked by family and rich with detail—that animate each story with special frequencies, especially for listeners grappling with split-identities themselves.
Winner of the 2023 Soft Skull-Kimbilio Publishing Prize, a collection of short stories that elaborate the realities of a diasporic existence, split identities, and the beautiful potency of meaningful connections
Primarily told from the perspective of women and children in the Northeast who are...
Discover more
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
