One doesn't have to be a sailor to need navigation skills, and Amina Gautier (The Loss of All Lost Things) demonstrates why in her impressive collection, The Best that You Can Do. These 58 works of microfiction, many of them infused with 1970s pop culture references, focus on people of color contending with challenges large and small. The linked pieces in "Quarter Rican" center around a young woman of Puerto Rican heritage who is part Black, growing up at a time when depictions of Hispanic people on American television were so rare that it was a thrill to see Charo perform songs on The Love Boat. The closing section, "Caretaking," is comprised of pieces about a Black woman debilitated by a stroke, her family members, and the home-care assistant who tends to her.
The stories in the middle sections are of varying quality, but others, particularly the more political works, are stunners. "Breathe," one of the collection's most powerful entries, is a tale of a Black academic who, at a Modern Language Association convention, lies down on the convention center carpet as if she has died at a protest. Later, after attending a panel in which one paper called for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, she admits she knows nothing about Gaza, "but she knows the trauma of being treated like an unwanted stranger in one's own country." Racism, family squabbles, the dating scene, the immigrant experience: life offers plenty of obstacles that the protagonists in this memorable assortment navigate with dignity. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer