The Rock Eaters

The Rock Eaters is Brenda Peynado’s beautiful collection of short stories, and it spans a wide range of issues–immigration, class differences, xenophobia, debt, and more–and often has a touch of magical realism.

The short story We Work in Miraculous Cages revolves around a character struggling with student loan debt. She is bright (an engineer!) and works incredibly hard, but the story finds her shifting between multiple minimum wage jobs. The grind is physically and emotionally strenuous, especially when combined with the fact that she knows that she is intelligent and can do more. The story shows just how real and personal and harrowing student loans can be; instead of lifting people up, they have chained them to the ground.