Where the Sun Will Always Shine
The Writer's Story
by Aracelly Contreras Borja

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Esmeraldas, Ecuador, is a beautiful place for a story to begin. But a beautiful beginning doesn’t mean a story isn’t complicated. Aracelly Contreras Borja’s life—like everyone’s, though perhaps more than some—has paired that beauty with sorrow, joys and mistakes walking hand-in-hand. All but abandoned by her father, abused by her mother, left alone with her siblings to struggle to make ends meet, Ara dreams of escape from the whirlpool of her family’s pains. Even escape, however, leads down dangerous roads. Ara is exploited and abused by unscrupulous employers, caught up in new struggles as her family comes and goes. Eventually, she falls in love, and he promises to sponsor her to emigrate, and then— Well. It’s complicated. Freedom from her family means loneliness in a land she can barely make herself understood in—this land of opportunity that doesn’t seem to want to give her much of a chance to prove herself. Despair opens the ground up beneath her, and she finds herself trying to break the cycles she was born in for the sake of her children. Does she? Well. Once again, it’s complicated. Looking back on it all, Ara’s greatest hope is that by laying open her life within these pages, she can at last make herself understood—and perhaps find forgiveness from those who matter most.

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Growing up in Ecuador, in the city of Guayaquil, Aracelly Contreras Borja became familiar with legends at a young age. At fourteen, she first heard the tale of a mysterious WWII kamikaze deserter stranded on the Galapagos Islands, and then again at age twenty-one. It left such an impact on her that she decided the story needed to be shared with a wider audience, and she has penned The Kamikaze. Aracelly also published a memoir, They Called Me Alicia, in 2021. When she isn’t writing, in her leisure time, Aracelly enjoys watching movies and making crafts. She lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.

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Contributors

Author

Aracelly Contreras Borja

Editor

Roman Mushka

Illustrator

Fei-Li Chang

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