I honestly know nothing about Puerto Rico, so really loved the deep sense of place that threaded through these stories, even the ones set in the diaspora. It definitely made me keen to check out longer form work by the author.

Although some of the stories were a bit weird, I guess it's to be expected from short form!

Thansk to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC copy.

Sorry to say I bailed on this one at 75%. Finished 8/11 short stories & can‘t bring myself to read the rest.

The stories are about the Puerto Rican experience. Learned some PR history but the Puerto Ricans in this book are crass, physically violent in self-expression, angry and bitter. Weird dissonance in the smooth and gentle narrative voice and inner thoughts of the characters and then a violent eruption of emotion, whether it be gesturing vulgarly to striking someone. Yet none of the outward actions seemed to have a lead-up in the interiority of the character's thoughts. Though maybe understandable given the external circumstances (a character was dismissed, put-down), what we know of the character wouldn't lead us to understand that the response to the stimuli would be physical, much less violent.

Also there's just plain weirdness - like the story where a guy accidentally undergoes a sex change operation. What? Just altogether strange and in the end I couldn't embark on another story where I was trying to make sense of the motivations and responses of the characters.

Adding a star for the insight to Puerto Rican history and the relationship with mainland USA.

<B>I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review</b>: Praise from Yxta Maya Murray? Say no more, send me the file! Very few authors need to worry about getting my attention who have previously gotten hers.

The author's receipt of the inaugural Tomás Rivera Book Prize is quite telling. As this isn't a Prize most of us will have encountered before, I'm going to reproduce the entire explanation offered at the LARB Books site (link is above):
<blockquote>The Tomás Rivera Book Prize is a unique partnership between the Los Angeles Review of Books and UC Riverside. Open to any author writing in English about the Chicanx/Latinx experience, the Rivera Book Prize is committed to the discovery and fostering of extraordinary writing by a first-time or early career author whose work examines the long and varied contributions of Chicanx/Latinx in the US. The Rivera Book Prize aims to provide a platform that showcases the emerging literary talent of the Chicanx/Latinx community, to cultivate the next generation of Chicanx/Latinx writers, and to continue the rich literary memory of Tomás Rivera, Chicano author, poet, activist, and educator. Known for his seminal collection of stories, …and the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Rivera was the first Latino Chancellor of the UC system and a champion of higher education and social justice. The Rivera Book Prize honors his legacy and his belief in the power of education, activism, and stories to change lives.</blockquote>
Very worthy goals, ones I'm happy to support. And as a big bonus, I found it easy and fun to do so here.

The story-by-story summaries live at my blog.

Interesting stories representing the diverse experience of people with connections to Puerto Rico - whether they have roots there but live elsewhere, have always lived there or have come to call it home.

These stories focus on a wide range of topics, one centres on loss and is one of the more relatable stories of the collection. Another sets out an outlandish situation but deals with it in a realistic way. They all question identity and how an individual feels in the wider world.

A solid collection.

My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

In J. L. Torres’s second story collection Migrations, the inaugural winner of the Tomás Rivera Book Prize, a “sucio” goes to an underground clinic for therapy to end his machista ways and is accidentally transitioned.

Ex-gangbangers gone straight deal with a troubled, gifted son drawn to the gangsta lifestyle promoted by an emerging music called hip-hop.

Dead and stuck “between somewhere and nowhere,” Roberto Clemente, the great Puerto Rican baseball icon, soon confronts the reason for his predicament.

These stories take us inside the lives of self-exiles, unhomed and unhinged people, estranged from loved ones, family, culture, and collective history.

Despite the effects of colonization of the body and mind, Puerto Ricans have survived beyond geography and form an integral part of the American mosaic.

Worth a read! Enjoyable ⭐️⭐️⭐️

‘Migrations’ is a collection of short stories based in Puerto Rico and with Puerto Ricans living in the US. On the cover is a picture of a '52 Cadillac El Dorado crossing the sea, like a car advertisement from a bygone era. The El Dorado is the focus of the first story "Mint Condition", Jim's pride and joy, when he passes away, his widow hopes to sell the car for a small fortune but learns its value is much less than she expected as it was in far from mint condition. The second story is a bizarre story entitled "Sucio", a ‘Sucio’ being a guy "who couldn't keep his junk from getting him into trouble.", In this story, told strangely in the second person, the guy loses his junk in a strange operation accidentally transitioning him and messing with his sucio-mind something terrible. There is a classic American car in that story, too, a '68 Cherry Red Pontiac GTO. The collection isn't just about human migrations, one story is about the Puerto Rican Coqui, a small but noisy frog disrupting the fragile ecosystem of Hawaii. The Puerto Rican baseball legend, Roberto Clemente also features in one story, as a rookie he faces prejudice on two accounts being black and being Spanish-speaking. I felt some of the stories weren't adequately finished, the author started strong and then the ideas fizzled out towards the end. Also as a non-Spanish speaker, I found the use of many Spanish terms like tia, abuelita etc... to be confusing. My favorite story was "Go Make Some Fire" set in the early 20th Century, where children from the sugar plantations of Puerto Rico are taken to America with the promise of being educated, but there they find themselves exploited to work in farms and factories alongside Native Americans. This was interesting, being the first book I've read focused on Puerto Ricans but I was slightly disappointed with the execution of the stories.

Thanks to NetGalley and LARB Libros for a free eARC in return for an honest review.

The good writing style and the personal experience promised good stories about migration, but I must admit that I was disappointed. The stories ranged from pointless, to depressing, to fantasy. the connections between the various characters are not clear enough.