Somebody needs to call the shots.
Leading by committee may seem equal, right? Everybody should have a voice, but there has to be a head honcho in the mix somewhere. Somebody has to make decisions and stand up, to lead with a big heart, a cool head, an open mind and, in “The Boss” by Aya de León, a solid backbone.
For Tyesha Couvillier, it should have been the best day of her life.
Newly-graduated from Columbia with a degree in public health, she’d just landed a job as executive director of the Maria de la Vega Community Health Clinic, focusing on the well-being of New York’s sex workers. It was a job she’d had her eye on for years, and she should have been celebrating.
Instead, there was nothing but drama: her older sister, Jenisse, was in town with her drug-dealing boyfriend and two teenage daughters. Not that Jenisse did anything specific; just her being in town aggravated Tyesha.
It didn’t help that Tyesha’s friend, Lily, was having trouble, too: she was a dancer at the One-Eyed King, a club that was forcing its strippers to do things they didn’t want to do and one girl almost got hurt. Lily had learned that a Ukrainian mob was behind the new rules, and so she’d turned to the Clinic—and Tyesha—for help.
So much drama—and yet, it was just what Tyesha needed. Her life was uninspiring, but going to bat for the strippers was something she could totally get into. She understood their plight: in another life, Tyesha had been a dancer/escort, too.