Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

9 reviews

michelle_my_belle's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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catherinew's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25


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reads2cope's review against another edition

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5.0

"I think about this often, about whether the past is real if we don't bring it into the present. Tree falling in the forest and all that.  I'm okay, I say.  I don't know if I am the tree or the no one who doesn't hear it."

An incredibly well done multi-generational story of multiple families. I loved the way each thread of plots and characters and themes wove together across time and boarders and families. These stories laid bare the atrocities of the immigration systems in the USA in a way that furthered the plots and without disrupting the pacing. A masterpiece of grief and love and struggle and resilience. Every character is nuanced and makes sometimes terrible and almost always necessary choices, and I couldn’t help but love all of them.

“What a luxurious thing, to feel. The pain a tender ache now that she could massage and curl into. For so long, she’s held the grief at bay.” 

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kelseystoner's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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readingwithcoffee's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

One hand I do think Garcia is a talented writer but the novel despite having perspectives for two Salvadorans a girl and a woman multiple times, the Salvadoran characters, the non white Latinos feel like props to the white Cuban women, including the black Cubans who exist largely for the white grandmother and cousin to accuse of theft or be surprised the other has a name. And while it is good to talk about the diversity of Cuba and the racism within it again the black Cuban characters seem to exist only for props or for reader presumed to not be black or non white Cubans. Thus the book feels like a book a white Cuban American or white cuban woman might get something out of but not meant for black cuban diaspora or not but instead for white gringos moreso. Similarly the Salvadoran characters don’t feel like they equally share the story even how prominent their povs are and the author even described in of their brown skins as “burnt” as if that’s not incredibly racist just because it’s burnt sugar. Which makes it unsurprising that that character Gloria perspective unfortunately comes of as patronizing and like the author isn’t aware how smart she is or Gloria doesn’t exist to be Gloria but for the author to share facts about US immigration that read clunky and almost copy and pasted from a nonfiction piece while the cuban family feels much more dynamic and lived in. Like Gloria live is one lived by many people but instead she feels like she exists for white peoples to read and feel bad about maybe even white and/or rich Mexicans but not for Salvadorans and Central Americans to read. This is always why I am unsurprised the blurbs for the book are almost entirely about the white Cuban characters. 

I do really like the topics Garcia wanted to tackle, the relationships between women and cycles of abuse and I completely agree with the author that there is no “one” immigrant story in her short interview with Roxane Gay but I think she really needs to re-examine how she writes non white characters and characters her Mexican and Cuban family don’t fit into since those characters suffered the most. I do really like that she wrote about racism and classism in Mexico and the resentments between different Latino groups even if again that sometimes felt clunky. I especially loved the Cuban families divided less by borders and more by interpersonal issues and with very different and strong political opinions. 

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just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 
This has such an intriguing and poetic title! Plus, I'm always interested in small/short novels like this - it seems like there is not enough space to make an impact and yet often these are some of the most intense and insightful reads. (I'm thinking of Convenience Store Woman as another that, for all its brevity, made a major impression.) So yea, I wanted to check this one out. 
 
Of Women and Salt follows an intergenerational line of women from two families. The first focuses, in the present day, on Jeanette, a Cuban-American living in Miami, struggling with addiction, who attempts to find herself by traveling to Cuba to learn more about her family's history. Jeanette's mother, Carmen, is dealing with coming to terms with her daughter's reality, while steadfastly leaving her past, the time she spent raised in Cuba, in the past. Carmen's mother, Dolores, remains in Cuba, having done her level best to protect her daughters from the turmoil around them (internal to their family and external in Cuba) as they were growing up. And even further back, we learn of the more historic beginnings of Jeanette's family, back in the late 1800s when Cuba fought for independence from Spain. Jeanette's family story is interwoven with that of Gloria and her daughter Ana, who is taken in by their neighbor, Jeanette, for a short time (on a whim), when Gloria is taken by ICE and Ana is dropped off at an empty home after school. From Cuba to Miami to Mexico to a detention center in Texas, this novel follows women, telling the stories of mothers and daughters over generations, as they survive and live.  
 
Let me start with the writing. It was gorgeous. I listened to a short interview between the author and Roxane Gay at the end of the audiobook and it turns out that Garcia also writes poetry and you can absolutely tell. The writing has a rhythm to it that is both effortless and literary, and the combination gives a gorgeous flow. There were also a few standout moments for me, like the imagery of paralleled birth and death by gunfire (in defense of freedom/liberty), that were particularly searing. The title itself, as I mentioned, is part of what pulled me to this book to begin with, and it delivers on that promise. The ways that the salt of women – sweat, tears, oceans, attitudes – are portrayed throughout, both literally and metaphorically, is poignant. I will say that there were a times where the writing (the POV, the style, a non-linear temporal progression) changed from chapter to chapter, as there were a variety of voices narrating this story. It sometimes made the novel feel more like a connection of interconnected short stories that a single compiled story, which could be off-putting. I think in the end, the rest of what I loved made up for that bit of separation/jumpiness. 
 
Topically, this was a very impactful read, tackling the complexities of intergenerational trauma, domestic abuse, colonialism, addiction, immigration and border-crossing and ICE/deportation. And in such a short work, I was deeply impressed with the nuance with which each was handled. There was depth to each character’s experience that had me fully connected to each, even though our time spent with each was so short. It really helped, I think, that each character’s time in focus give insight to their life, as well as providing insight for a few of the other as well. Lovely dimension. And the language used to describe some of these concepts, questions like “does loss unspoken become an inherited trait?” and observations like “even the best mothers in the world, can’t always save their daughters” and “there is no ‘minor’ in abuse,” no spectrum…it was all just truly on point. 
 
Overall, the way Garcia portrays the cycle of women (and motherhood roles, in particular) is incredibly discerning. She pinpoints how they fail each other and how they make up for it elsewhere. How sometimes even that isn’t enough and, in the end, forgiveness and reuniting don’t happen because the gulf is too big. How even though (each and every time) there is a shared goal of something better/more, the difference in the definitions and abilities to achieve it are different enough to create an insurmountable gulf. It hits in the feels in so many ways, universal in emotion despite the specificity of the individual lives. A lovely short read that definitely embodies the particular power and sorrow of women. 
 
"I want to know who I am, so I need to know who you've been." 
 
“If safe were a place, it would look nothing like any of the options, and I want to scream but I swallow, I want to claw but I smile, because I need to seem good.” 
 
“Motherhood: question mark, a constant calculation of what-if.” 
 
“What kind of fear is credible? There are so many kinds of fear.” 
 
“...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. It's all lottery, Ana, all chance. It's the flick of a coin, and we are born.” 
 
“Why? Why dwell, why talk, what good would it do? She had mastered a life without unearthing her own horror stories [...] the past haunted only if you let it.” 
 
“As if anything were about beauty. Or want.” 
 
“…how will I survive, and then the day after that, how will I survive, and when will I stop feeling exhausted from all the surviving?” 
 
“For so long, she'd had a different story about her own trajectory. She marveled at the way memory became static history, this thing so easily manipulated and shaped by her own desires.” 
 
“Women? Certain women? We are more than we think we are. There was always more.” 
 


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qqjj's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Tried to do too much? There were soooo many themes touched on (immigration/asylum/deportation and differences between generations and country origins, political regimes, domestic violence, substance abuse and overdoses, mother-daughter relationships, and more), but didn't/couldn't explore them all thoroughly within this short book. All of these themes are intriguing to me in themselves, but all of them together seemed too much. It was also quite challenging to adjust to the jumping POVs and time/places of each chapter/vignette, the ordering and structure of which seemed haphazard, and never really allowed for the atmosphere of the settings to really shine through. Interested to see future directions of the author, but ultimately just okay for me.

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lilymouse's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If I could give this a hundred stars I would. This was a rollercoaster of emotions, and I honestly don't know how I feel other than in absolute awe of the beauty this book held.

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charlottejones952's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This was such a tough book to read but beautifully crafted. The writing propelled me through so quickly and I was astounded by how vivid each of the characters' lives were. 

I would recommend looking into trigger warnings as this is an extremely dark book at times but with that caveat in mind, I would highly recommend it. Gabriela Garcia is an author to keep an eye on in the future. 

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