Book Description

Dominoes and Other Stories from the Puerto Rican, the only book of fiction by playwright and poet Jack Agüeros, affirms the triumphs and ordinary struggles of the Puerto Rican experience in New York. In stories that span the 1940s through the 1990s, Agüeros re-creates the barrio in all its multifaceted immensity, with its candy stores, plaster saints, fruit vendors, sidewalk games of dominoes, knife fights, and stories of successful craftspeople and entrepreneurs. These stories convey hard, sometimes brutal, often bittersweet, experiences, but throughout Agüeros writes with artistry and unyielding compassion. Richly detailed, wry, and matter-of-fact, Dominoes and Other Stories from the Puerto Rican is an important achievement by an accomplished American writer.