Book 37: Única Looking at the Sea - Fernando Contreras Castro
"Inside the great landfill at Rio Azul, Única and her friends, her family, society's cast-offs, struggle to survive on what those in the city throw away."
There are surprisingly few books from Costa Rican authors translated into English, but this one was a great find. There's a lot in this really short book. Única is a "diver" - a woman who lives in a landfill and survives off of other people's trash. She used to be a teacher, but ended up on the streets after being laid off. She lives with Bacan, a troubled young man whom she raised after finding him years before, a child alone in the dump. Each inhabitant of the landfill has a story - both a life before and a life made at the landfill. And then, of course, there's politics. The townspeople decide they no longer want to live near the divers...or the landfill. But what happens when the landfill is someone's home?
