This is a collection of stories that explores the power of love in all its forms, obsessive love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love as it is shaped by passion, betrayal, and the echoes of intimacy. On a beach in Santo Domingo, a doomed relationship flounders. In the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover's washing and thinks about his wife. In Boston, a man buys his love child, his only son, a first baseball...

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú--the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents,...

"I'll Give You A Reason is a debut short story collection that explores race, identity, and the pursuit of the American Dream in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey"--

The story of a Dominican girl, the Anglo woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her. Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York--Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul--who wonder what it will mean to "make a difference" in such a contrived situation. The story illuminates their shifting...

"With the English and Spanish text side by side on the page, this bilingual edition of the vibrant picture book celebrating the strength of community and the versatility of plátanos is ideal for bilingual readers as well as Spanish speakers learning English and vice versa. Paletero Man meets Fry Bread in this vibrant and cheerful ode to plátanos, the star of Dominican cuisine, written by award-winning poet Lissette Norman, illustrated by Sara Palacios,...

Told in alternating voices, follows Miguel and his newly adopted street savvy cat Lolo as they build a loving and supportive friendship in Washington Heights.

Soledad, an art student at Cooper Union, discovers that the past is not so escape to evade when she is called back to Washington Heights to care for her mother.

"Lola was just a baby when her family left the Island, so when she has to draw it for a school assignment, she asks her family, friends, and neighbors about their memories of her homeland ... and in the process, comes up with a new way of understanding her own heritage"-- "So when Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember The Island--she left...

While doing research for her documentary about her cousin Natasha--who disappeared in the Dominican Republic fifty years ago during the Trujillato--twelve-year-old Pilar Violeta Ramirez is transported to Zafa, an island where Dominican myths and legends come to life and where her cousin is being held captive in a sinister magical prison, and Pilar must defeat the Dominican bogeyman if she hopes to free Natasha and return home to Chicago. Includes...

After the ice cream stand where she works is robbed, seventeen-year-old Minerva Gutiérrez plans to get revenge on her predatory boss while navigating grief, anger, and dreams of escape from her dead-end hometown.