Book Blurb:
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 neighbor 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. Steadfast in her quest for understanding, Jeanette travels to Cuba to see her grandmother and reckon with secrets from the past destined to erupt.
My Review: 4 stars
Of Women and Salt is one of those books that can pack heartbreaking and telling narrative into a mere 224 pages. Although short in length, its story is long…spanning five generations of women and taking place in Cuba, Mexico and Miami. Not a word was wasted in this lyrical book.
This book jumps in time, place and point of view. It covers addiction, mother/daughter relationships, family, immigration/deportation and the connectivity of these points of view through the generations. I won’t say any more as it’s best to go in blind and just enjoy the tale.
Quotes I liked:
She could now string letters into words. She marveled at the magic of it all, how human beings had thought to etch markings on stone to tell their stories, sensed each lifetime too grand, too interesting, not to document.”
“She pulls he covers to her chin. Wonders what real prayer she’d whisper if she were the kind of women who prayed.”
“Her sponsor told her once that the only love she knows what to do with is the kind of love that breaks a person over and over again.”
“But don’t believe the mothers who tell you motherhood is a vocation or sacrifice or beauty or anything on a greeting card. Motherhood: question mark, a constant calculation of what-if.”
“This is fact: In Miami, Cuban is synonymous with white.”
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