The Boy Kingdom / El Reino De Los Varones

Achy carries multiple identities: she is Cuban American, lesbian, and Jewish. She captures the universality of motherhood while also illuminating the uniqueness of her queer, multilingual, multicultural family: the way her elder son looks as her as if she’s “dancing with the dead” when she speaks Spanish; the way her boys prefer mac’n’cheese to tostones; the day her elder son comes home from school disquieted, then finally spills it: “A couple of boys yelled at him: Your moms are queer!” The collection is divided into four parts. The first part focuses primarily on Achy’s sons, and subsequent parts branch out into stories of her parents, her roots in Cuba, and her divorce.