Happy Publishing Day to Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia !

In just over 200 pages, some amazing voices of women unfold over several generations, leaving men on the edge of the narrative.

Women who are flawed, who endure so much trauma and yet who truly love...

Motherhood is at its core and its depiction so accurate and raw at times. These quotes struck a chord with me:

"Think how even the best mothers in the world can't always save their daughters".

"Don't believe the mothers who tell you motherhood is vocation or sacrifice or beauty or anything on a greeting card. Motherhood: question mark, a constant calculation of what-if. What if we just gave up?"

One last quote I felt so brilliantly summed up the harsh reality of this narrative: "There are no real rules that govern why some are born in turmoil and others never know a single day in which the next seems an ill-considered bet."

And Jeanette ❤️...

Powerful.

Thank you to @Netgalley and @panMacmillan/ Picador for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Of Women and Salt is a beautiful and captivating story following five generations of Cuban women and a mother and daughter who migrated to Miami from El Salvador. Each chapter flows effortlessly between each women’s life, exploring the themes of immigration, mother and daughter relationships, addiction, abuse, loss, isolation and survival. If you are looking to read more about immigrant stories I would highly recommend this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Picador for an ARC copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis: The lives of the women of a Cuban family and a Salvadorian family become entangled when a woman is taken by ICE, leaving her daughter behind.
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
I really really enjoyed this book and raced through it. Garcia’s storytelling is beautiful and captivating, her characters real and interesting. This is an intergenerational story of women, strong and struggling, finding their way to safety, belonging, freedom - whatever that means to them.

The story spans from 1866 Cuba to present-day Miami, sharing stories of a woman’s ancestors to relate her struggles with theirs. I’m a sucker for any book about mother-daughter relationships, and though every one in this book was strained in some way, I adored the focus on these relationships, how family legacy travelled down through the women of the family. A Spanish edition of Les Mis ties the women of the family together, and in it is written a quote - “Who are we, weakness? No, we are force.” These words inspire each generation of women in the family.

Of Women And Salt explores racism within Cuba and the US, what it means to have never met your family that live in another country and to be a tourist in the one where your ancestors come from, and the differences in privilege within the immigrant community that arises from documentation, class and education.
I’ve seen some really interesting debate around the representation in this book, primarily around the one black character and the two Salvadorian characters, how their stories of trauma primarily serve as character development opportunities for the white Cuban family. I actually didn’t necessarily find that - I was as invested in Ana and Gloria’s story as I was with Jeanette and her family. There are so many layers to this book, and whilst Garcia doesn’t at all shy away from showing privileged characters of all types of ethnicities, racist characters, the harshness of civil war, the traumas of deportation and trying to cross back into the US, she doesn’t fully explore them, as there’s so much in there. If anything’s clear from this book, it’s that these issues aren’t just black and white - the characters are dimensional, some privileged, some following a long history of racism within Cuba.
If you read this book, be sure to read more from @lupita.reads and here:
https://tastefulrude.com/of-women-and-salt-rubs-salt-in-the-wounds-of-the-black-caribbean/

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TW: drug addiction and abuse, sexual and physical abuse
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Publishes in the UK: 15 April 2021
#OfWomenAndSalt
Advance digital copy from #NetGalley

Likes
One of my favourite things about this book is the variety of women and storylines on offer. We range from 19th-century Cuba to present day Mexico and USA, stopping at cigar factories, detention centres, urban jungles and affluent neighbourhoods. I found that each story told brought with it different emotions and a level of understanding of what life must be like for an immigrant, be it legal or illegal. You would think that the narrative would be quite taxing to read, given the themes, however I found that this book was rather enjoyable to read and didn't feel overly sombre.


Dislikes
Personally, I feel that there is nothing that stands out as a dislike. Occasionally, upon reading a paragraph or page, I was left confused and didn't quite understanding the meaning or intent of the text. Although I did re-read certain excerpts of the text, I was still left slightly perplexed and didn't truly understand what the author was trying to portray, nor what she wanted me to see. Specifically, at the end of the novel, I felt a certain event was quite rushed, there was no natural build up or crescendo, it was simply added into a dialogue almost as an offhand comment. In these situations, I was certainly hung and was reeling to know more and why.


Final thoughts
Of Women and Salt is a truly wonderful piece for work. It is a beacon that allows us to see the choices women and mothers must make throughout their lives. How these women are expected to be silent, yet they stand up and demand that their stories are heard. To Gabriela Garcia; congratulations on a brilliant debut!

Thank you to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan and Gabriela Garcia for allowing me to review this book prior to publication.

Trigger warnings: spousal abuse, child molestation, sexual violence, drug addiction.

*Of Women and Salt* is one of my favorite books of 2021, so far. This book focuses on the overlapping stories of immigration in Florida and overlapping Latinx identities. In particular, this book focuses on the difference between the Cuban community in Miami and other Latinx communities. In interviews Gabriela Garcia has given to *[Parade](https://parade.com/1188656/meganoneill/gabriela-garcia-of-women-and-salt-book-interview/)* and *[Vogue](https://www.vogue.com/article/gabriella-garcia-women-and-salt)*, she notes these themes as central to dismantling the myths around the "immigrant experience," and showing that the Latinx community(ies) is not a monolith. The Elián González episode of You're Wrong About also talks about Cuban immigration to Florida and the United States' "wet-foot-dry-foot policy," and it is worth a listen if you need some background.

[You're Wrong About - Elián González](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yb3R0ZW5pbmRlbm1hcmsud29yZHByZXNzLmNvbS9jYXRlZ29yeS9wb2RjYXN0L2ZlZWQv/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly9yb3R0ZW5pbmRlbm1hcmsub3JnLz9wPTExODUy?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV5YbquebuAhVOrVkKHSLRAR8QkfYCegQIARAF)

The narrative starts in a cigar factory in Cuba in 1866 and then moves to Miami, Florida in 2014, setting up contrasts between the different women we follow throughout the book. Jeanette is a woman of Cuban descent whose relationship with her Cuban mother is under tension. Their already difficult relationship is tested when Jeanette's neighbor, Gloria is taken from her home and sent to a detention center and Jeanette takes in Gloria's young daughter, Ana. Carmen's attitude towards Gloria and Ana, undocumented immigrants from El Salvador, sets up the discussions comparing Cuban immigration in the past to more recent immigration to the US.

Throughout this book, we get to inhabit the perspectives of multiple generations of women and girls in the two families on which this book centers. Garcia's writing effortlessly moves between these different perspectives and gives them each a unique style. For example, when one of the main characters Jeanette is a teenager in 2002, the writing perfectly reflects the vibe of being a teenager in 2002. These subtle changes from each perspective helps the reader connect to each of the characters better. Garcia connects the different sections really well and the transitions never feel jarring. Absolutely masterful.

Other types of immigration are also discussed – for example, there a minor character from the US who moves to Mexico, but clearly does not see herself as an "immigrant," but rather an "expat." There is a German man living in Cuba who thinks of himself the same way. The differences between who is an "immigrant," vs. an "expat," changes the way people are treated. The discrimination against some characters who "immigrated," to Mexico (dumped there by US immigration), is another contrast in the "immigrant experience." Gloria and Ana are both deported early in the narrative and are dumped in Mexico and told by the US immigration authorities that they should "make their way back to El Salvador," from there, even though they have no resources to do so.

Garcia also shows race and racism to be important in Latinx communities. This is a further complication to how Cubans and Cuban-Americans see themselves vs. "other" Latinx people:

> “But it isn’t as though Black Cubans fare better in Miami, where racism is polite, quiet. This is fact: In Miami, Cubans will scoff when you call the, Latino. “I’m not Latino, I’m Cuban,” they will say. By which they mean, *I am white, another kind of white you don’t know about, outsider*.”

For non-fiction titles on race and racism in the Hispanic Caribbean, see:

- [Prostitution, Modernity, and the Making of the Cuban Republic, 1840-1920](https://www.bookdepository.com/Prostitution-Modernity-Making-Cuban-Republic-1840-1920-Tiffany-Sippial/9781469608945) by Tiffany A. Sippial
- [The Mulatto Republic](https://www.bookdepository.com/Mulatto-Republic-April-J-Mayes/9780813061962) by April J. Mayes
- [Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920](https://www.bookdepository.com/Imposing-Decency-Eileen-J-Suarez-Findlay/9780822323969) by Eileen J. Suarez Findlay
- [Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico](https://www.bookdepository.com/Reproducing-Empire-Laura-Briggs/9780520232587) by Laura Briggs

The ending is tied up nicely without feeling too neat. I was very satisfied and would absolutely re-read this book in the future. Five stars, would recommend.

Of Women and Salt is the complex story of the survival. The story is told by strong women over centuries and their stories are at times hard to read. They have all faced violence and hardship and each woman chooses her own escape route. The relationships between the mothers and daughters are diverse, some are fragile but all of the mothers fight for what they feel is the best for their daughters.

Some stories are easier to follow than others but overall this is a story definitely worth reading.

I was given a copy by NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

*TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, DRUG ABUSE, VIOLENCE*

Of Women and Salt is a touching novel by Gabriela Garcia. It’s a whole female narration spanning decades across Central and North America.

The characters’ lives run parallel and sometimes overlap in singular and unexpected ways. We live with them in Cuba, Miami and Mexico – between the second half of the nineteenth century to 2018.

Generation after generation, from Maria Isabel to Dolores to Jeanette, we meet the women of a family split between two countries, facing all sorts of challenges and building strong characters for themselves.

Of Women and Salt is made of heart-breaking stories and challenging truths about being women, about immigration, mental health and drug abuse.
There’s the right balance of hope and sadness, you’ll feel angry and scared and you’ll remember these women for a long time after you put the book down.

A suggestive debut, I’m looking forward to new works from Gebriela Garcia and I will definitely recommend Of Women and Salt to everyone I know in the entire book community.

A salted-wound of a novel. Garcia’s bruising, tender portrayal of female relationships never descends into saccharine sweetness. Pilar Quintana’s La Perra (translated into English as The Bitch) would be an excellent chaser to this stiff drink.

Incredibly fast paced, beautifully written novel juxtaposed to such a dark and heartbreaking story of the experiences of 5 generations of Cuban women.

Switching between the characters and different years, we learn all about the stories of these women who have been through it. I enjoyed the character and year switching, it was easy enough to figure out who was who and how they related, different characters and where we were at a time. It's important to remember the date though, just in case you're back or forward in time.

From a debut author all I can say is amazing, and I would read so much more.

It took a lot for me not to have a good sob at the end.

Content warnings for substance abuse and domestic abuse.

Thanks to NetGalley, Pan Macmillan and Gabriela Garcia for an eArc copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review..

A tough story told through the eyes of four generations of women, from a Cuban family, and an El Salvadoran mother and daughter.

The nonlinear story hops from woman to woman spanning Cuba, Miami and Mexico.

The book focuses on mother and daughter relationships / separations and unspoken truths. Covering topics of immigration, politics, wealth and class we are exposed to many darker elements of life; addiction, domestic violence & sexual assault.

It's a tough read in places (my heart went out to young Jeanette) but well written with a good pace. I'd definitely be keen to read any future books by the author. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for the pretty cover art.

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

In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction. Daughter of Carmen, a Cuban immigrant, 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 ICE. Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, must process her difficult relationship with her own mother while trying to raise a wayward Jeanette.

While dealing with addiction, Jeannette tries to help her neighbour child who has been left behind when ICE detains her mother. She also is learning about her Cuban family history, while her mother Carmen is determined not to talk about it. I really liked this story, despite it not being the usual type of book that I like. It’s definitely unique. The language is poetic; it flows beautifully. It’s a generational story.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I'm clearly an outlier with my negative review, so take all of this with a pinch of salt.

While I commend what the book sets out to do - tell the story and experiences of generations of different Cuban women (and a woman from El Salvador) who have emigrated to the US - this didn't make for an enjoyable reading experience for a number of reasons. The writing felt clunky, there is WAY too much going on, and the characters fell flat. If these things had been done well I might've been able to put up with the relentless misery that was the plot, but alas. Not for me!

This starts a little slow which I find is often the case with translations, but a picture soon forms of a woman who works in a cigar factory where usually only men are employed. I immediately contrast this with the opera Carmen, where workers in a cigar factory are all women, but that's a different country. In Cuba, men do this work.

It is 1866 and Maria Isabel has few options in life. Marriage appears to be the practical course. But reading the books of Victor Hugo gets her husband on the wrong side of political unrest.

The story carries us through several generations of Cuban women and the hardships they have overcome through strength and perseverance. Though the description suggests it follows a family through five generations, it doesn't feel that linear. The jumps in time are too far or go backwards and new characters keep getting introduced so that it feels like a series of short stories about Cuban women facing different hardships.

Eventually familiar names occur and connections start to get made. Despite the slow start, I did find the stories drew me in. I cared what happened to the women and felt the despair of the detention center in Texas when one woman was held there, wondering what happened to her young daughter.

The compromises these women had to make to get by in a hostile world can be heartbreaking, yet show an incredible resilience against adversity.

Of Women and Salt is an ambitious multigenerational novel that deals with women’s experiences of survival, resilience and trauma. Its nonlinear structure travels in time and place between Miami, Cuba and Mexico and explores mother-daughter relationships. Underpinning these experiences are wider issues of politics, race, class and immigration and darker themes of violent men, abuse and drug addiction. It is a lot to take in, in a short novel of just over 200 pages and while Garcia’s writing is often excellent, I felt the novel somewhat unbalanced between character development and the wider issues it explores.

Gloria and her daughter Ana are undocumented immigrants from San Salvador living in Miami next door to Jeanette who struggles with drug addiction and finding her identity and place in the world. Her mother, Carmen is a Cuban immigrant who has cut herself off from Cuba and her own mother and refuses to talk about her past. Both Jeanette and Carmen are deeply scarred from years of abuse by Jeanette’s violent, alcoholic father. Jeanette and Ana’s stories intersect when immigration officers take Gloria into custody. Jeanette takes 8-year-old Ana in but calls the police a few days later on Carmen’s advice. After Ana is reunited with her mother, both are deported to Mexico and left to fend for themselves.

These experiences are told in vignettes and we also see Jeanette in Cuba, getting to know her cousin Maydelis and grandmother Dolores. Dolores’s story with the reason for her estrangement from Carmen is revealed in another vignette and so is that of Maria Isabel, Dolores’s great grandmother.

At times, Of Women and Salt reads like a family saga, at others, as an indictment of US immigration policy, violent patriarchal regimes and violence of men against women. At times, the stories were compelling and powerful but at others, the perspective felt limited or a little shoehorned in by the author. Garcia does occasionally explore different points of view, such as between Maydelis and Jeanette’s naïve and somewhat idealistic perceptions of each other’s lives and circumstances. More often though, the one-sided narrative left me with questions.

A good book overall and a promising author. My thanks to Pan Macmillan, Picador and Netgalley for the opportunity to read Of Women and Salt.

This is a book to be savoured. The prose is so lyrical I felt like I was feeling the words at times, rather than reading them. The women are flawed, soft, survivors and to me, that was what made their strength feel real. I loved exploring the stories of migration and the varied reasons for it; Ana, a young child whose mother is taken from her while she is at school, particularly captured my heart.

I agree with other reviewers that it is best thought of as a collection of short stories, although ultimately, they are brought together beautifully.

Thank you so much to Gabriela Garcia and Pan Macmillan for this ARC!

This is a story that spans generations of women. That spans 19th century Cuban cigarette factories, to battling addiction, to detention centres in the present day. It explores how where we come from impacts our lives, how generational traumas and loves repeat in new ways again and again. How complex relationships between female family members play out in extreme situations. It is rich and beautiful in the tapestry it weaves.

The books jumps between different women and different times, and each snapshot of their lives twists into the next. But I found myself wishing to spend longer with each women - each story could have been a book in itself. It also felt as though it could have kept going, that there was more to tell, instead it just sort of stopped.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this, and would definitely recommend to anyone looking for diverse reads, or wanting to explore the immigrant experience in the US.

My thanks to @Netgalley gifting me this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

#OfWomenAndSalt #GabrielaGarcia #Ebooks #Reading #DiverseSpines

Present day Miami. A twisted history in Cuba. A million stories in between. Content warnings include drug addiction, drug overdose, racial discrimination, displacement, death, domestic violence, and war crimes.
Despite the many stories and the multiple timelines, the overarching story of resilience and suffering still weaves together like you were physically there alongside each woman. The different perspectives each add a layer to the novel, as Jeanette is battling addiction in her adolescence, Carmen is managing her personal trauma and displacement from Cuba, and we are introduced to Ana and Gloria, who are detained at the beginning of the story. This is not a novel you read comfortably, and it is not a story you read with ease. However, it is a story that leaves you feeling like you’ve learned something, despite it being fictitious. It is a story of hard choices, fierce ancestors, and tenacious mothers. I couldn’t put it down.

Of Women and Salt tells the story of 5 generations of women who migrated from Cuba to America. Occasionally, I was confused as the author makes continuous leaps in time and narrators. And unfortunately, since there is no voice specific to each narrator, these leaps become monotonous after a while. While the book tries to tell many things, unfortunately, it reveals very little. Because I didn’t know any of the characters properly, I couldn’t empathize, and as a result, I didn’t care what happened to them. I wish she’d pick a few characters and tell their story. A much stronger book would have come out. Still, it is not a bad book and highly readable if you are interested in immigration stories.

Of Women and Salt was the perfect read around International Women's Day. Following five generations of Cuban women and a Salvadorean mother and daughter, this book takes us on a journey across space and time to witness the strength and tenacity of women who choose to keep fighting against all odds.

These women are the only protagonists here, their voices (often silenced in their daily life) rising prominently to shine a light on their truths, their struggles, their pain, and their hopes for a better future. The men in their lives lurk in the background, their viewpoint unimportant and their main contribution being bringing pain and tears - or being conspicuously absent. The women finally take centre stage and reclaim what is theirs, even if only for short stretches. The book's nonlinear narration, in fact, means that it often reads more like a series of short stories or vignettes linked by a common thread.

Don't let this book's size fool you: despite being quite short, it is packed with content and material for reflections. It also takes some dark turns, and I found I often had to stop to give myself time to absorb what I'd just read and digest some of the harder themes. Covering everything from domestic violence to drug abuse, sexual violence and the harsh reality of a modern-day US immigration detention centre, Of Women and Salt is as far as from a light read as possible. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed it, in its own way.

The writing was beautiful and lyrical, and it quickly drew me in. The characters were complex and portrayed excellently, even if we only spent a limited time with each of them. The thing I struggled with most was the non-linear narration, but that's something I know I often find hard to follow. Each time/location change was clearly marked at the beginning of the new section, but I still found I often had to go back to remind myself how far in the future or in the past we had moved compared to what had come before.

Overall, this is a powerful book and a really strong debut from the author, and I look forward to reading more of her works in the future. Of Women and Salt takes an honest look at the harsh reality of life for many women, restoring their voices and their dignity, and certainly made me wish for the day when for women everywhere stories like this will be just that - stories.

CW: domestic abuse, sexual violence, imprisonment, child abuse, death, violence, drug abuse and addiction.

History. Women. Character. Cuba.
I really enjoyed Of Women and Salt. The book delves deeply into a short episode of each woman's life (there are 5 featured), and frankly all 5 could have merited a book for themselves. The stories come together (as you know they will!) over a few generations of time line. There's some powerful insight into the challenges facing women today and yesterday, and of course the question of identity. Geography, culture and immigration are all explored, and I was left wanting more!