There’s a Name for This Feeling/ Hay un nombre para lo que siento by Diane Gonzales Bertrand (review)

Ten brief tales appear in this bilingual collection of short stories, expressing a full range of contemporary realism, from two stories featuring grandparents’ declining mental status to a vignette of an eleven-year-old potato chip mogul. Bertrand displays a marked facility in switching between topic, form, and genre, but unfortunately, this multifaceted approach also means that the book is marked by a distinct lack of focus. While some stories—like a pubescent cross-country team’s search for a rumored naked woman on their route—would be spot-on for middle-schoolers, others require levels of contemplation more often found among older teens. Several selections, like the title story in which a teenage girl misreads an ex’s signals with heartbreaking results, have hi-lo potential for readers hesitant in either language, while others tightly pack sophistication into a few pages, as in an encounter between a silent hospital clown and a young woman reeling from a miscarriage that her mother calls a “blessing.” A similar unevenness shapes the stories’ tones, with, for example, a tale of one guy’s disregard of his parents’ warning to avoid New Year’s Eve fireworks dipping into didacticism. Still, these kids display a lot of approachability and their stories encompass a breadth of Latino/a experiences across language ability, socioeconomic status, and gender, giving the collection the potential to reach a wide audience. Perhaps the most felicitous use of this compendium, though, would be in a bilingual composition classroom to show off a diversity of approaches to the short story; this would be aided by suggested discussion questions and writing exercises appended.