ByAchy Obejas

Born in Havana, Cuba, Achy Obejas has written fiction, poetry, and journalism. She is the author of five books, including the novels Days of Awe, Memory Mambo, and Ruins. She is the translator, into Spanish, of Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her, and, into English, of Everyone Leaves by Wendy Guerra. A former reporter with the Chicago Tribune, she is now a columnist with In These Times. She is the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellowship, a team Pulitzer Prize for the series “Gateway to Gridlock” while at the Tribune, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, the Studs Terkel Journalism Award, a Cintas Foundation Fellowship and a 2014 USA Ford Fellowship. She is currently the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College in Oakland, California.

  1. The cousin’s freckled arms reach out to the visitor. The cousin says she recognized her instantly from old family photos. There is glee and awkwardness, memories of what cannot possibly be remembered: playing as cherubs in the park across the street from their grandmother’s house, catfish caught with hand-held lines in the river behind the house.

    They fill in what cannot be talked about. It’s been fine, yes, except

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