Of Women and Salt
Gabriela Garcia
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Of Women and Salt
Gabriela Garcia
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
At once a multigenerational saga about Cuban women learning to survive after losing everything and a brutally honest look at the immigration system in the United States through the eyes of a Salvadoran mother and daughter deported to Mexico after building a life in Miami, this novel captures the beauty of refusing to surrender.
In her wrenching debut...Gabriela Garcia meticulously weaves a mesh of parallels between Latinx mothers and daughters.
... beautifully evocative.
... a beautifully written novel that turns like a kaleidoscope in the light, illuminating the blurry delineation of who is an insider and who an outsider. The chapters build upon each other, offering the reader cumulative insight and a sense of dramatic irony. But even while the reader understands much more than any given character ever does, the author also allows precious white space where the reader can come to her own conclusions. This book is an achievement, with short-story-like chapters that nevertheless follow a satisfying arc. Even better, they culminate in a redeeming and emotional ending..
If Garcia takes on more than can fit into 200 pages, the result is an intermittently breathtaking narrative from an author whose voice is already as confident as that of more seasoned writers.
Reminiscent of Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, each character is determined to live free in a society that targets her. Garcia’s debut is slim yet lush, imbued with a harsh beauty that reminds us that the cruelties inflicted upon women—and in this case Latinas, are historical constants.
Debut author Gabriela Garcia makes her intentions clear from the first page.
... has the feel of a sweeping family saga that’s hard to reconcile with its slender profile.
In Of Women and Salt, the debut novel from Gabriela Garcia, the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, any preconceived notions of migrant women are thrown out the window. Garcia shows a flawed cast of characters that spans decades and settings in a world where their lives are rich and complex — and wholly and simply human.
Of Women and Salt spans centuries and oceans and, as Garcia introduces us to the women in this family’s lineage, she suggests there’s always more to unravel. In other words, migrant narratives are more complex and entangled than we’ve allowed ourselves to imagine.
Fans of multigenerational stories, family sagas, and own voices narratives are sure to be excited about Gabriela Garcia’s debut novel. Following a series of mothers and daughters across five generations through Cuba, Mexico, Texas, and Miami, Of Women and Salt depicts the stories, struggles, and strengths of a collection of Latinx women both within and beyond their families.
While the stories intersect near the beginning and end of the book, the women’s experiences are as distinct as the cultures from which they come.
Each chapter could easily function as its own self-contained short story, but together they weave a delicate, unifying thread: to be a woman is to be in a permanent state of exile.
... beautifully written.
Garcia turns her MFA thesis for Purdue University [...] into her widely buzzed first novel. Presented in 12 chapters that read more like interlinked stories, Garcia channels her Miami-based Cuban-Mexican American heritage into five generations of a Cuban American matriarchy.
As the book opens, it's 2018, and Carmen is writing in anguish to her daughter, Jeannette, begging her to find the will to live. Then we're immediately swept away to Camagüey, Cuba, in 1866, right before the first Cuban war for independence from Spain, where we meet one of the women's ancestors.
Garcia’s dexterous debut chronicles the travails of a Cuban immigrant family.