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The Echo of the Worn-Down: An Inventory of Emotional Malfunctions
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Dec 1 2025
Pages: 84
Weight: 0.27
Height: 0.17 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
This is not a self-help book. It's an inventory of breakdowns - a country's, and a body's.
Through raw vignettes and uncomfortable mirrors, The Echo of the Worn-Down: An Inventory of Emotional Malfunctions looks at what it means to live in a place of permanent emergency. Set against the backdrop of Puerto Rico, these pieces trace how public crisis seeps into private life until anxiety, insomnia, depression, and burnout feel like public policy rather than personal problems.
Across five sections, the book moves from the national to the intimate:
collective anxiety, media alerts, and a people trained to live on edge
silent depression and the blackouts no one reports
suicide, gender violence, and femicide as stories society claims it never saw coming
dementia, child poverty, and homelessness as absences we step over every day
addiction and emotional corruption as the anesthetics of a worn-down country
This book doesn't offer comfort; it offers a mirror.
In that mirror, each reader is invited to recognize their own fracture, their own malfunction, and the quiet ways we keep going anyway.
About the author
Edwin Alverio (Puerto Rico) is an educator, painter, and writer. He has published poetry, fiction, and books for teaching Spanish. He lives in Connecticut, where he writes and creates out of wakefulness and memory.
Cover art: Venas (2016), painting by the author.Also from
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