Of Women and Salt ★★★★★

Of Women and Salt (Click Here To Buy)

★★★★★ (4.5 Stars)

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia is a fiction book about multiple generations of a family of Cuban women.

I checked this book out from the library.

​Starting with Maria in 1866, working in a cigar factory in Cuba listening to a man reading to her while she rolls cigars - to Delores who's husband is hell-bent on revolution and beating his woman...until Delores decides not to put up with it anymore - to Carmen who came to Miami to start a new and escape her family - and finally Jeanette who struggles with addiction during the opiate crisis. Concurrently, Gloria is from El Salvador working in Miami trying to support her daughter Ava until they are detained by ICE and later deported to Mexico, despite being from El Salvador and Ana later decides she must make it back to the States. Sweeping vignettes of strong yet imperfect women across generations and countries, Garcia is a force to be reckoned with.

I am a fan of multi-generational family sagas and, being raised by a band of strong women, this book spoke to me. When I saw the family tree at the start of this book, I thought I knew how it was going to go - turns out I didn't and I'm glad for that. The addition of Gloria and Ana's story, a differing line from Maria's was an interesting choice but makes sense once you get to the end of the book and also once you learn that Garcia is of both Cuban and Mexican decent. Garcia wrote this as her thesis during her MFA at Purdue with the encouragement of Roxanne Gay.

If you liked Of Women and Salt, I also recommend Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, These Ghosts are Family by Maisy Card, The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, and The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

Happy reading ~

Ms.Bjork