Power as Cultural Identity in Now We Will Be Happy Anonymous College

In Now We Will Be Happy, Amina Gautier’s collection of short stories about Puerto Rican families and relationships on the mainland, the ability to connect to Puerto Rican culture is framed as a very important type of power and agency. Families deny their children access to the Spanish language and Puerto Rican culture, including the music, the food, and the island’s history, hoping to ease the difficulty of their children’s assimilation into U.S. society, but the children are left at a disadvantage, powerless without that knowledge, trapped between the two cultures and uncomfortable in either. The beauty of this collection of stories is how it examines many facets and the variety of repercussions that can result from issues like this, and that is certainly true with the issue of power and agency as caught up in Puerto Rican cultural and language identity.

The most glaring instance of this is in the titular story, “Now We Will Be Happy,” and its connecting story, “Muñeca,” where Rosa, whose parents never taught her Spanish (42) and raised her on standard North American fare like “baked chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes” (41), marries Pedro, a man familiar with Puerto Rican culture who wants her to learn to make “bacalao,...