Dole, Mayra L

When Lazarita's unemployed father cannot afford a party for her "quinces," the birthday celebration that marks a fifteen-year-old girl's entrance into womanhood, her friends in her Miami Cuban-American community enlist the mayor's help to plan a surprise block party.

Chavi's music teacher believes that only boys should play drums in Miami's Festival de Calle Ocho, but Chavi knows she is a good musician and looks for a way to prove it.

Laura, a Miami high school student, gets caught kissing her lesbian lover which marks the start of big changes in her life, including getting kicked out of her Catholic school, thrown out of her home by her mother, and forced to build a new kind of family with the help of friends and supporters.