A review by just_one_more_paige
When Trying to Return Home by Jennifer Maritza McCauley

reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

 
I got this collection of short stories as an ALC from Libro.fm a few months ago. As you know, I am hit or miss on short stories, as far as being in the mood for them. But when this made the longlist for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize (consistently my favorite book award's longlist), I decided that was a sign to give it a go.
 
 According to Goodreads, When Trying to Return Home is "A dazzling debut collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond - and an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms." That seems like a good enough summary to me. I'm not going to add much more because, as per usual, I plan to give a few lines of thought/reaction to each story in the collection, and then finish with some overall thoughts. So, let me jump into that. 
 
Torsion - This take on a mother-daughter relationship, the love and sense of “owing” that comes with it, is really well written in the unhealthy spaces that can turn into, those small steps that put you over your head before you know it (even against your better judgement, but with full knowledge/awareness overridden by that innate sense of loyalty and guilt that only a parent can wield over you). There are fine lines between love and “loving too much” and hate, when one's own view of what love should be supersedes what’s actually best for that person, and it's on full, heartbreaking, display here. Also, big applause for that impossible choice to cut a tie that’s hurting you, even if it’s blood related. “I loved my mama more than morality, and the Law couldn’t challenge my love for her.” 

 When Trying to Return Home - This was short, but portrayed that instant connection that comes from a visual similarity, and the sense of yearning and disconnect that comes after the similarity is not as present as the surface would suggest. What a commentary about being somewhere where you look like the minority, and having to fight for both belonging and your own individuality within that lumping together (and the moorlessness of how to do/communicate that). “…she couldn’t express heartbreak in any language.” 

 The Missing One - This was historical fiction about a young Black student integrating a white school. The look at him as a “integration test project” and his older half-brother as a “vagabond” showcased how cruelly people can be treated and expelled from their own communities, springing from the effort to belong in a place not built for you and never likely to open to you anyways. The narratives that are spun by popular opinion, based on first reactions (and societal values and rules of "propriety," especially related to colorism and purity) and no effort to find truth or question details, are central themes. And the connections (family, community) that are lost through the barriers that spring from those values/rules are so disheartening. 

 Good Guys - This one had a *great* conversational stream of conscious narrative style. I loved how much life and personality there was in it. Also, this entire internal monologue about being one of the good guys and the seesaw of self-congratulations and then guilt over the actions that made him a good guy or not, and his own complicated mental gymnastics around it was…fascinating. I mean, nothing really happened in the story, but this was the most compelling and engaging story so far anyways. 

 Fevers - This is heavy. Heavy with sibling resentment and the different ways life plays out and how hard it is to recognize that everyone carries burdens and other ones always look better than your own. Ooof. Also, this is a quick "years later" glimpse at some of the characters from The Missing One. Alos, fevers was a lovely metaphor for the ways life wears you down and adds to your plate. 

I Don’t Know Where I’m Bound - This story is all about the struggle to find a home in a place (town, city, etc.) and instead, learning to find a home in a person. When sharing the truth of one's emotions requires a vulnerability that feels impossible, a person has to decide whether the chance of telling that truth might be worth it OR the potential failure/unmatched reaction is enough to make the risk not worth it. And that's what our narrator faces here. That and being someone with an innate restlessness and having to figure out how that meshes with relationships (or not, as it were). 

 Last Saints - The connections of a shared hometown and how the urge to get out/escape the memories of it makes unlikely bedfellows is the central theme of this story. There was also some interesting spirituality and historical setting here. And an insightful look at how what we know of where we are from doesn’t always match what the outside knows of it - seeing how that causes our MCs to feel unmoored, or jarred, was affecting to read. (Although despite that, tbh, this was one of my least favorites of the collection.) 

La Espera - Along with Good Guys, this was one of my favorites of the bunch. Reading this made me emotional (anger as a primary one) in a slowly creeping way that is more powerful for the way it seeps in and holds tight; the kind of reaction that is the mark of good writing. It was the way McCauley is able to portray the weight of regrets and those decisions you aren’t sure of in the moment that stick with you forever that really got me. I enjoyed the structure too, getting different perspectives of the same situation (different lives within the same orbit). And the title - the dual and interwoven meanings of hoping and waiting, and how they both show up in this story - was great. Oh and that last line “we aren’t waiting for anything important” ...oh DAMN. Coming in hot (deservedly so, but still) to finish. “There is no winning for us women.” 
 
Liberation Day - A revisiting of some characters from Good Guys, this was a solid final story. it leaves the readers with a conclusive, but open-ended feeling, as our MC realizes that every day can be a day of liberation, with the freedom to try new things and experiences, when you are able to make the choices for them (or choose not to choose yet, as it were) for yourself. Also, I thought the perspective of the "calling" to join a convent, as a refuge from the way women (Black/Brown women in this story in particular) are treated in the “real” world, was a great, original, concept to ponder. 
 
Perhaps I wasn't quite in the mood for the short story collection, but this one just didn't quite do it for me. I struggled to connect the stories together, no similar setting or time or writing voice/style or characters. Now, there were a few that I mentioned where we do revisit characters from previous stories, but it was too haphazard to feel right to me. I would have preferred either no connections at all, or a more consistent and tangible connection across the board. And I know that the "theme," according to the blurb, is home and belonging and the search for or effort to create it.. And I see that. I do. There were aspects of it throughout absolutely. But like I said, there was something too scattered about it for it to really work for me. Perhaps that was purposeful, within the "trying to find something/where/one to call home" vibes...I don't know? I really appreciated, objectively, the settings and time periods and populations that this collection highlighted that are not often given voice or literary focus. And thank McCauley for that. Though I still keep coming back to how the unity of the collection didn't quite click for me (and even individually there were only a couple stories that I really liked, as in, was invested in.) Ah well, it happens! And it wasn't, in any way, bad. It just wasn't right for me. 
 
I'd love to know other thoughts on this, from anyone else who has read the collection. What did you think? Did you have different feelings/reactions about it than I did? 
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