Status Updates From Cubana: Contemporary Fictio...

'Potosi II: Address unknown' - DNF. Too meandering and confusing.

'A Whiff of Wild Desire' - Ummm. Maybe this one wasn't MEANT to be fat-phobic, given the ending. But it really, REALLY is!

'Dust to Dust' - These three ladies have been friends for decades. But when one is dying, the other two have a really strange way of expressing that!

'My Aunt' - Very short story about how our relatives are a part of us, for better or worse.
'Disremembering a Smell' - TBH not sure I understood this one, which is quite surreal.
'Catalina in the Afternoons' - Sensually evocative tale of a colonial-era woman who broke her leg after canoodling with the gardener and to pass time imagines a dove is an enchanted knight who visits her.

'Anhedonia' - Love the shift in POVs illustrating the misunderstanding between two women who could have been real friends if they only admitted their vulnerabilities

'The Scent of Limes' - The shifting of time back and forth in the 12-YO's narration mirrors the sea at the foot of this house. And Iris - I know what you did to Anibal for your daughter's sake. Good for you!

'Japanese Daisies' and 'Internal Monologue on a Corner in Havana' are slice-of-life stories on the way Cuba's weird economic situation affects how people think and interact.
'A Tooth for a Tooth' starts that way too, but becomes a sharp little satire on what it means to "have eggs" (the Cuban phrase for "to have balls")

Story 1, 'Somebody has to cry':
So 2 pages in I'm wondering "is it wrong to be simping so hard for this girl we already know is doomed?"
Then this gem: "it occurs to me that she cultivated her body for it's use-value. All the rest of us...were preparing ourselves for a future auction."
Her fight for nice-looking affordable housing. And of course she's queer... So yes, Lazarita, please do cry for Maritza!

Gosh, if the rest of this book is as good as the foreword, it is going to be incredible!
However, I do wonder why this is apparently just an excerpt from a larger collection called 'Pillars of Salt' - why didn't the whole thing get translated? (The effort, maybe; Behar doesn't say anything about permissions)