The stories in this bilingual collection portray the everyday lives of a cross-section of Chicano men and women in the contemporary US. Here are workers living in the chaparral around the San Diego border with Mexico, battered wives, farmworkers, divorced women rebuilding their lives, a travelling salesman, and conflicted academics. In direct and hard-edged prose, the author gives voice to the disenfranchised and alienated. The narrative perspective changes from story to story, portraying the experiences of what could become classic characters in Chicana fiction.