STORIES ALL OUR OWN, by Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera

Prose, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

STORIES ALL OUR OWN captures the dreams and desires of five cousins who are all the same age every summer. They spend their weekends, vacations, holidays and special occasions gathered in each other’s homes that are scattered across the Southwest: Blythe, Yuma, El Centro, San Diego, and Riverside. They wish and splash and scratch together. They sneak out of the house and cause travesuras when their adults aren’t looking.

It is a tribute to the joys of childhood in an era when doors weren’t locked and kids played outside until the streetlights came on or the bugs came out or the moon wasn’t bright enough to guide the way home.

The collective voice captures the way these girls defy gendered expectations and how they see the world with unfiltered exuberance. Their journey exposes the societal forces that attempt to destroy their innocence. We watch them grow.

"Through the five cousins’ challenging rules and expectations of their tías and society, the author forges a new path in storytelling."

–Lisa Eve Cheby, author of Contact Tracing and Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"This book will make you want to call your own cousins to exchange stories of childhood reverie all while drinking a cool glass of Sunny D."

–Ryane Nicole Granados, Author of The Aves, Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize

"For these days, these years, these pages, we are reminded of the girls we were, and 'wish we could always be right here.'"

–Noriko Nakada, author of Overdue Apologies

Chicana Feminist and former Rodeo Queen, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera (she/her) writes so the desert landscape of her childhood can be heard as loudly as the urban chaos of her adulthood. A former high school teacher, she earned an MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles and a PhD at The University of Southern California. Her short stories have been anthologized in Rural Writers of Color, Made in L.A. Volume 4 & 5, Ramblings & Reflections: SouthWest Writers Winning Words Anthology, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. Her play Blind Thrust Fault was featured in Center Theater Group Writers’ Workshop Festival and her one-act play “Temporary Arrangement” was featured in the Latinx group of the Short + Sweet Festival Hollywood. Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and spotlighted in Best Small Fictions 2022. Her YA novel, Breaking Pattern, is available from Inlandia Books. She is a Macondista and works for literary equity through Women Who Submit.