Lien Estrada

This happened many years ago, when I worked at the Municipal Culture Department in the accounting office as an accounting assistant.

While I’m busy selling some of my books, a customer approaches me. He sits down beside me and starts talking.

I asked a friend how she manages to give herself injections when she has a migraine attack. I need to learn how to inject myself.

I don’t remember feeling as much joy when I bought my liquefied-gas stove as I do with this charcoal one, which I just bought….

My Systematic Theology professor used to illustrate what it means to experience certain things without being conscious of them…

My mother has been a junior high school teacher for most of her life. She taught History. She retired recently and told us at home that she wanted to go back to work.

I’m doing what I call “stockroom work.” Dusting things off, organizing, setting aside some books to offer first…

When I visited Banes, one of the municipalities farthest from the city of Holguín. Among the friends I had planned to see was a poet.

We will have to keep reinventing each day, however absurd it may seem to us. Because what is at stake is what we call survival.

It is a system here in Cuba where the common greeting has become the pitiful, “At least we’re still breathing.”