This is a rather loose collection of cuentos, or stories, by a person of two very different worlds. In the years of her youth, Judith Ortiz was shuttled between Paterson, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. Her parents were immersed in the Spanish culture of the Caribbean tropics; but like so many other Puerto Ricans, her father left the island in the 1950s to secure a better life for his family. He joined the US Navy and spent six months of every year at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the rest of the time at sea. When he was stationed in Brooklyn, he would send for his wife and children to live with him in an apartment outside Paterson. Thus, young Judith spent her childhood years alternately living in a small town on a tropical island and in a large urban area in North America. Her father adjusted to the new culture, but her mother never did
