First printing: 2,000 copies. Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes is the winner of the 2020 BOA Short Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, The Sleeping World, was published by Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books imprint in 2017 and received wide acclaim in journals such as Publishers Weekly, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and NBC Latino News. The stories in Are We Ever Our Own trace the lives of the women in an extended Cuban-American family. Each story follows a different woman in the clan using a wide range of genres, time periods, and styles with the setting jumping between Cuba, America, and across the Cuban diaspora. The stories explore themes as varied as immigration, racism/colorism, classism, education, fine art, dance, gender-based violence, and political history, yet the women are all connected by a feeling of otherness and longing for a sense of belonging. Stories in this collection have previously appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, Big Fiction, The Common, The New England Review, One Story, Slice Magazine, and Western Humanities Review. Strong regional appeal in Florida, the Midwest, Chicago, Texas, New York, New Jersey, and other areas with large Cuban-American communities.