Now We Will Be Happy is an award-winning collection of stories about the native Puerto Rican who have been displaced and living in different places, Afro-Puerto Ricans, American born Puerto Ricans. These people are trying to navigate their own unique cultural values and identities. The characters have to deal with identities of bi-culture although the world wants them to select only one. The author knows this perspective well as she is an America born Afro-American who has Puerto Rican heritage.
The book is opened by a story called Aguanile. It is the story of a girl who meets her grandfather and reconciles with her native land. The family has been split between Brooklyn and San Juan. We get to know how his grandfather abandoned their family and went back to Puerto Rico and started a new family there. When the story begins, the narrator is only 12 years old and she went to spend her summer holiday with her grandfather. The grandfather is an aficionado of salsa music. He knows all about the songs and performers and it gives him so much pleasure to share his knowledge with other people.
His granddaughter who came from Brooklyn becomes his target as none of his other children here was interested in music. He takes her to watch a concert but she kind of despises it because of the tight crowd. The grandfather explained why she must like them and gives her insights of his deep connection with the land. Next day he plays a song called Aguanile to his grandfather. Anyone can notice the pain and lament in his voice by means of Gautier's amazing language. When she grows older she understands the fact that this music works as an open door for keeping in touch with her native culture.
The title story Now We Will Be Happy features a young Afro-Puerto Rican girl who is ignorant of her own heritage. She does not know Spanish and never visited Puerto Rico. She has zero memory of the place to connect with it. She is married and is living with an abusive husband who beats her often. She wants to leave him but she has no place to go to. Her father is sick and the whole family is busy with his treatment so she doesn't want them to worry about her. She has a lover Yauba. He is older and not as handsome as her husband Pedro but he is very passionate. He described her about their cultural ethnicity. Yauba wants to open a restaurant in Puerto Rico. One day Rosa goes to his place and he cooks for her a native dish. Here once again the author's depiction of food, it's texture and smell leaves the readers hungry.
The eleven interlinked stories show the fractures families, lives and their language barriers. All the characters are so unpredictable. A boy who sets out to meet the mother he had never since childhood whole memories of her comes from his brother, a granddaughter bringing peace in her family by going across the ocean, a widow wants to die in the storm, a married woman goes on a bathtub voyage along with her lover, a displaced woman who is strangely addicted to candles; all of them deals with their own loss, regret, fear, anger and so many emotions to finally find their roots.
