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A review by camscornerbooks
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
4.0
So my reason for not being a 4.5 or 5 is only that it was a little hard to follow all the storylines because there were quite a few and it could be that I listened to this on audiobook instead of reading it which could have been part of the problem. HOWEVER, the audiobook narrater was amazing. Amazing. To hear the book read with a Hispanic accent and the correct pronunciations of the Spanish words was so enthralling.
The story itself left me in tears. I cried and I don’t cry easily at books. The story starts in present day and works it’s way backwards even going as far back as early 1900. It takes a while to figure out how each story connects to the others but what a beautiful tapestry this books weaves. It is powerful and painful and haunting and infuriating and beautiful.
Every voice in the book is that of a woman and over time you see her salt; Her sweat or her tears shaping and hardening her into what she needs to be or what she can’t control. Alcohol and drug addiction, spousal physical abuse, sexual assault, immigration, deportation, racism, revolution, mothers and daughters and granddaughters.
What happens when a mother does anything, everything for her child but can’t speak of it? When they live and die for them but leave the past buried believing that if you don’t bring it up it’s gone forever and can’t hurt you anymore? When they are present in every way but the one the child needs them to be, no matter the age? When they’re torn apart by deportation? By violence? By silence?
This handles so many experiences that all feel so viscerally real but never with judgement or condemnation for any party. Knowing that the decisions women make, have been forced to make for centuries, cannot be judged by one who is not living through it in their skin.
Read this book.
The story itself left me in tears. I cried and I don’t cry easily at books. The story starts in present day and works it’s way backwards even going as far back as early 1900. It takes a while to figure out how each story connects to the others but what a beautiful tapestry this books weaves. It is powerful and painful and haunting and infuriating and beautiful.
Every voice in the book is that of a woman and over time you see her salt; Her sweat or her tears shaping and hardening her into what she needs to be or what she can’t control. Alcohol and drug addiction, spousal physical abuse, sexual assault, immigration, deportation, racism, revolution, mothers and daughters and granddaughters.
What happens when a mother does anything, everything for her child but can’t speak of it? When they live and die for them but leave the past buried believing that if you don’t bring it up it’s gone forever and can’t hurt you anymore? When they are present in every way but the one the child needs them to be, no matter the age? When they’re torn apart by deportation? By violence? By silence?
This handles so many experiences that all feel so viscerally real but never with judgement or condemnation for any party. Knowing that the decisions women make, have been forced to make for centuries, cannot be judged by one who is not living through it in their skin.
Read this book.