Moving backwards and forwards in time, Of Women and Salt is the story of five generations of women that shifts between a vivid, lush Cuba on the brink of political upheaval, and the different parts of America the family call home years later.

Of Women and Salt &/i>is the story of five generations of women that shifts between a vivid, lush Cuba on the brink of political upheaval, and the different parts of America the family call home years later....

A fierce and powerful debut. Garcia wields narrative power, cultivating true and profound work on migration, legacy, and survival

Vorwort
Moving backwards and forwards in time, Of Women and Salt is the story of five generations of women that shifts between a vivid, lush Cuba on the brink of political upheaval, and the different parts of America the family call home years later.

Autorentext
Gabriela Garcia is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship from San Jose State University. Her fiction and poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is the daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Cuba and grew up in Miami. Of Women and Salt is her first novel.

Klappentext

Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt traces a lineage of five generations of women - mothers and daughters - across the Latin American diaspora. It begins in nineteenth-century Cuba: young María Isabel is the only woman working at a cigar factory, where each day the workers are read Victor Hugo and encouraged to recognize their value and strength. But these are dangerous political times, and as María begins to see marriage and motherhood as her only options for survival, the sounds of war are approaching. As María seeks personal emancipation through learning to read, the world around her is destroyed forever.

Decades later, in 2012, María Isabel's descendant Jeanette is recovering from addiction. When she makes a snap decision to take in Andrea, her neighbour Gloria's daughter, after Gloria is detained by immigration officers, her life looks likely to take a new turn. Gloria, stuck in a detention centre, wonders where she might hope to bring up her child safely, and a few years earlier Yolanda, a political immigrant from Cuba, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother and with her husband while raising her wayward daughter Jeanette.

When Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother, she discovers a book of María Isabel's that promises to link her more fully to her own heritage. Then finally, in 2017, at the border between Mexico and Texas, a grown-up Andrea makes a dangerous and determined journey in an effort to give herself the best chance at life - her erroneous memory of Jeanette's kindness driving her on.

Moving backwards and forwards in time, Of Women and Salt follows Latina women of fierce pride and longing, all irrevocably linked by the inheritance of trauma, and the writings and stories passed between them.

Zusammenfassung

A sweeping, masterful debut about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born.

1866, Cuba: María Isabel is the only woman working at a cigar factory, where each day the workers are read Victor Hugo and encouraged to recognize their value and strength. But these are dangerous political times, and as María begins to see marriage and motherhood as her only options for survival, the sounds of war are approaching.

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, she is determined to learn more about her family history from her reticent mother and makes the snap decision to take in the daughter of a neighbour detained by immigration officers. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.

From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt follows Latina women of fierce pride and longing, all irrevocably linked by the inheritance of trauma, and the stories passed between them. It is a haunting meditation on the choices of mothers and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them.