For decades, bodegas have served as the undisputed anchors of Latine communities across the United States, particularly within the bustling boroughs of New York City. These small neighborhood shops, stocking everything from essential Caribbean staples like plantains and casabe to familiar over-the-counter medicines, have long functioned as vital cultural bridges connecting immigrant lives to the distant homelands of their families. For generations of parents and abuelos, finding those specific goods on local shelves—and being able to exchange warm greetings in Spanish with the person behind the counter—offered a profound sense of comfort, belonging, and community, functioning entirely independently of socioeconomic backgrounds or legal citizenship statuses.

That enduring cultural bridge served as the primary inspiration for journalist and debut author Amaris Castillo’s upcoming book, Bodega Stories, scheduled for release by the University Press of Florida on September 8, 2026. Through a poignant combination of narrative writing and original photographs captured through her own lens, Castillo’s memoir documents the daily lives, enduring struggles, and deferred or fulfilled dreams of her Dominican immigrant parents and the diverse community served by their family business, the Orlando Latin Market in St. Petersburg, Florida. The book explores not only her unique childhood experience growing up inside the aisles of a bustling corner store, but also how those formative years taught her to observe everyday people with deep curiosity, fiercely embrace her Dominican heritage, and understand how the physical places where we grow up ultimately shape who we become as adults.

“I think I’ve always had a curiosity about other people, and that dates back to my very Dominican Caribbean childhood in Brooklyn,” Castillo reflects. She spent the first decade of her life navigating the neighborhood of Crown Heights before her family relocated to Woodhaven in Queens, eventually settling down in Florida when she reached high school. In many ways, she firmly believes, her upbringing nurtured the observant storyteller she would eventually become.

“In first grade I even won a storytelling contest. It was me, and I think two other kids who won the contest, and I remember making a book that ended up in an exhibit somewhere in a museum in New York City,” Castillo recalls. “So, I think working at the bodega, being up close to all the unique characters… I got to see the best in humans, and I got to see the worst in humans.”

When Castillo officially began the reporting and documentation process for Bodega Stories, she realized she was doing much more than simply cataloging the history of her parents’ retail store. She was actively chronicling the rich, complex lives of its hardworking employees and the diverse array of customers who walked through its front doors day after day.

One such encounter involved Yanick, a regular customer of Haitian descent, who visited the store around New Year’s Day to purchase specific ingredients needed to prepare soup joumou, the traditional Haitian soup deeply associated with the nation’s hard-won independence. Castillo watched as Yanick carefully selected pieces of calabaza squash and searched through the meat freezer for fresh cuts of beef. At first, the young journalist did not fully grasp the cultural significance of what she was witnessing right in front of her.

“I started searching Haitian soup, and I realized, oh my god, I’m pretty sure what she was doing was gathering ingredients for this soup that means so much to her and other Haitians,” she notes.

Yanick later confirmed her suspicions, verifying that she was indeed preparing soup joumou for her family to celebrate the holiday on January 1. For Castillo, that single, quiet moment brought crystalline clarity to a phenomenon she had been observing inside her parents’ bodega all along: customers were never simply shopping for mundane groceries. Instead, they were actively searching for tangible pieces of home.

“I felt like I was watching in real time people coming to the store with a reason, with a purpose,” she explains. “And it was oftentimes to find the foods that they love, that they’re comfortable with, that they’re familiar with, and that is a bridge to their culture. Food is identity.”

For residents of New York City, the word bodega can feel nearly synonymous with the urban landscape itself. It evokes the image of the tiny, neon-lit neighborhood shop where a resident can purchase anything from a hot morning bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich to fresh plátanos, avocados, a jar of Vicks VapoRub, and heavy-duty laundry detergent, usually accompanied by a lazy bodega cat dozing somewhere near the register.

Although bodegas are frequently viewed exclusively through the lens of New York’s vibrant Puerto Rican and Dominican communities, Castillo places these micro-economies into a much broader, historical lineage of neighborhood shops established by successive waves of Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants. She emphasizes that early Puerto Rican communities in the city helped lay the foundational infrastructure of bodega culture that Dominican immigrants would later inherit and expand.

“In the 1920s, especially Puerto Ricans, they opened a bunch of bodegas, restaurants, botánicas, and boarding houses,” she says. “So they really helped pave the way for Dominicans, I would say, with bodegas.”

As Dominican immigration to New York City surged steadily through the 1960s, 1970s, and particularly the 1980s, a growing number of Dominican entrepreneurs began purchasing established neighborhood bodegas from aging Puerto Rican proprietors looking toward retirement.

Castillo’s family became a direct part of that ongoing migratory lineage, eventually transplanting traditional bodega culture into the distinct landscape of Florida. Their Dominican-owned business, the Orlando Latin Market, has steadily adapted over the years to serve a much broader demographic, including a significant population of Cuban residents who have made the region their home.

“My parents, they still call it a bodega. We call it a bodega,” she affirms.

Growing up amid the displays of the store and later conducting journalistic reporting for her book introduced Castillo to individual patrons whose ordinary, routine shopping trips continually revealed much larger narratives regarding culture, migration, and family endurance. Among them is a Cuban customer who regularly purchases fresh plantains because his wife delights in preparing chicharitas, the thinly sliced, crispy fried Cuban plantains popular across the island. Then there is Deisy, a Cuban woman and former cashier at the store who still returns frequently just to catch up and chat with Castillo’s parents and her former coworkers. Deisy proudly wears a tattoo depicting a map of the island of Cuba neatly divided into its fifteen distinct provinces, with her birthplace of Cienfuegos highlighted prominently. Behind the geographic map sits the national flag, its bright blue stripes meticulously styled to resemble the churning ocean waves where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean meet—a permanent tribute crafted after she fled Cuba alongside her boyfriend in 2019, fully aware that she would likely never see her homeland again.

Similarly, a Dominican customer named José visited the market to purchase the specific ingredients required to cook a traditional batch of sancocho. Because his wife was suffering from poor health, he stepped up to help his sister-in-law prepare the hearty, comforting dish.

For Castillo, the family store continuously functioned as an informal, living classroom where she absorbed rich lessons regarding Haitian culinary traditions, Cuban comfort foods, and the subtle, regional variations of dishes like sancocho spanning across Latin America and the broader Caribbean.

Yet, Bodega Stories steadfastly avoids descending into a romanticized, overly sentimental portrait of immigrant-owned small businesses. Castillo remains intentionally rigorous about maintaining that vital distinction.

“I don’t also want to romanticize bodegas because that would diminish the realities that bodegueros face,” she asserts.

Those difficult realities encompass soaring operational costs, rising wholesale prices, and the increasingly volatile economics of running a small independent business, particularly within high-rent urban centers like New York City and fast-developing regions of Florida. They also directly involve the human toll of the immigration crisis unfolding daily right outside their doors. Castillo notes that her parents have frequently listened to distressed customers whose spouses or close loved ones have suddenly been targeted by deportation proceedings. Some patrons have broken down in tears inside the aisles, overwhelmed by a deep sense of defeat and fear.

“It’s difficult for my parents to know what to do in that situation, but I think that they’ve always just tried to comfort their customers,” she explains.

That emotional support represents yet another critical, unwritten function of the modern bodega: it serves as a reliable physical space where ordinary people can show up and seek basic human solace, even when their personal lives appear to be falling apart. Castillo recalls one particular customer whose husband was suddenly detained for deportation. Despite the crushing emotional weight, the daily demands of life persisted.

“She still has to go to the store, and she still has to get dinner ready,” she points out.

Shifting political landscapes and immigration enforcement policies do not erase the fundamental human need for daily sustenance. Children still require meals, families still gather around the dinner table, and the neighborhood bodega stubbornly keeps its doors open amid it all.

However, sustaining that essential role is becoming increasingly difficult in cities like New York, where skyrocketing commercial rents and aggressive gentrification threaten the survival of traditional neighborhood shops that have long anchored immigrant working-class populations. For the actual business owners, this struggle is entirely detached from abstract nostalgia; it represents their immediate, daily livelihood.

Castillo’s own parents have faced increasingly challenging financial years running their business. On occasion, when she calls her mother to check in on the state of the market, the response is that business has been “very slow.” While Florida once offered distinct economic advantages over New York, including a lower general cost of living, that dynamic is shifting rapidly.

“There’s a lot of development in Florida,” she observes. “Because everybody’s moving here.”

Ironically, the very wave of domestic migration that helped fuel the expansion of new Latine communities—and subsequently new bodegas—is simultaneously contributing to the unsustainable rise in operational and living costs. Ultimately, however, Bodega Stories remains an enduring love letter to Castillo’s parents, who are now in their sixties and continue to work grueling hours behind the counter. Unsure of when or if they will ever achieve financial security sufficient for retirement, she set out to honor and permanently document everything they have successfully built. When she reflects on the traditional concept of the American dream, she recognizes a reality her parents have already forged in their own terms.

“They have achieved their own version of it,” she says. “They are their own bosses. They’ve built this business into this beloved community cornerstone space that people continually go to and that they watched kids grow up into young adulthood in the store.”

As a testament to their lifelong labor, her parents even managed to construct a retirement home in Salinas, a quiet fishing village located in the Dominican Republic, where Castillo and her own children maintain their designated rooms. For the author, the storefront represents years of immense personal sacrifice made permanently tangible.

When asked what fundamentally motivated her to write extensively about her parents, their grueling migratory journey, and the eclectic array of people she encountered inside the bodega, her answer remains direct: “I want to validate their work. That’s something I’ve taken on,” she states.

Even though the book centers entirely around them and carries a dedicated tribute to their names, it still does not feel quite sufficient to the author.

“I still feel like, what else can I do to show them that all their sacrifices are worth it?” she reflects. “I want them to feel like I see them.”

Although Castillo initially conceived the book project as a way to document her family’s specific history and the surrounding community, its broader cultural meaning has evolved alongside shifting political climates. At a time when immigrants are frequently reduced to polarizing political talking points, she passionately wants everyday readers to view them as multi-dimensional human beings.

“I want this to be something that people can sit with and immerse themselves in the lives of everyday people, especially Latino immigrants,” she says. “I think especially in this time when immigrants are vilified left and right, I think it’s important to try to counter that with true stories. This is who we really are.”

Above all, Castillo hopes readers will come away understanding that immigrant life cannot be reduced to a single monolithic narrative. Thousands of distinct, ordinary stories quietly unfold every single day across the country—within residential homes, neighborhood restaurants, beauty salons, local churches, community centers, and, invariably, corner bodegas.

“Most of the people in this book… are just trying to make it,” she notes. “They’re just trying to live the best life they can live.”

Even as neighborhood bodegas face an uncertain economic future, Castillo wants readers to recognize them as enduring centers of human joy—an irreplaceable cultural experience well worth fighting to preserve.

“I would love for them to gain a greater appreciation for third spaces and a greater appreciation for bodegas and the livelihood that they provide for owners and bodega workers,” she concludes. “And also the community and sense of belonging that they foster for many of their customers. That to me is a gift, and I think it’s something that we should try to protect and try to preserve.”