Welcome to Litsy!

My October #bookspin (trying again!)
1. We Measure the Earth with our Bodies
2. Olga Dies
3. Land of Love and Drowning
4. Things are Never
5. Bad Girls
6. The Conductors
7. How The Garcia Girls
8. The Savage Detectives
9. Love after Love
10. Fresh Banana Leaves
11. A Small Place
12. I Am a Taxi
13. Aunties
14. Nasty Brutish
15. Book of Goose
16. Migrations
17. Pure Colour
18. Wild Tongues
19. The King
20. Bandit Queens

Excellent multi-generational book, starting with a 19C woman cigar roller and leftist husband, and focusing mainly on her g-g-granddaughter, an American drug addict wanting to reconnect with her estranged Cuban family. Focus is on the complexity of women in the same family with different views on tradition, identity, and migration, and a parallel story about Salvadoran women.
#ReadingTheAmericas2023 #Cuba
#Booked2023 #Threegenerations #Bookspin

Mario says I am not like other girls. Except that deep down I know that I am other girls: the woman beside me at the lipstick counter who always wears the same color because one day a man complimented her on it, my mother, who buys and buys, sure she hasn‘t found the right cream, the right dress, to win a man back. All the categories collapse at the behest of the men who make them. Mario has no idea the time and energy I spend trying to hide this.

I loved this book, following 3 generations of women from #cuba all battling their own demons. I was most invested in Jeanette‘s story, as she struggled with addiction in modern-day Miami. I also found the tangential story about immigrants from #elsalvador fascinating, and liked how it linked in to the main story.

I‘m using this for #cuba, for #readingtgeamericas23, but there‘s a tiny bit of #elsalvador and #mexico in there too.

#paintbynumber

Representing Cuba for #ReadingTheAmericas2023 I selected this book. So very good. It‘s a story about family and three women and the roles they play in each others lives. Beautifully written. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @BarbaraBB @Librarybelle

A story of women and oh what a story. Throughout the book I kept thinking about the relationship between Jeanette and Ana, now I know.

Quick, not bad

I loved that this was written from they eyes of Cuban and Salvadoran women, some of the most invisible in this country. Each character was beautifully written with all their flaws and strengths. I love the Discussion Topics at the end. Thought-provoking, a gentle reminder that every face has a story, and single actions can have generation-defining consequences.

Picked this up from my library‘s Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month collection...it was selection #2, the first one ended up being an audio book (We Set the Dark on Fire), which wasn‘t available in ebook. The premise sounds interesting.

Some really beautiful writing
A series of interconnected vignettes of one Cuban family focusing on the relationships between mothers and daughters.
The story is non linear but each new heading clearly states the year, plus there‘s a family tree.
The author introduces another mother/daughter pairing, while not from the same family, they do interconnect in an interesting way, adding to the story.
A strong debut from an author to watch.

I loved how each generation of women were woven together to create the story. But the book was short, and while that made it an easy read, I felt like some of the storylines were cut short, leaving me wanting more.

Since we‘re checking into a hotel for the weekend, I‘m hoping I‘ll have some quiet “me” time 🙏🏼 Im only taking 2 physical books, since I still have my audiobooks and kindle😎

Some very powerful writing in this—a stunning first page as well. I felt, though, that the connection between Jeanette and Ana was a bit unfinished. My favorite part was Dolores‘ chapter—I would love to read an entire book on her alone!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
This was a beautiful novel that wove together multiple generations of women and the struggles they faced. Revolution, addiction, abuse, loss. How different and yet how similar the women are in their suffering and their fight. Set in Miami, Mexico, and Cuba.

Highly recommend.

From addiction to immigration, there was a lot going on in this book. I think it would have been better if the author had created a book of short stories about the characters rather than trying to pull them together. #FoodAndLit #Cuba

Nope. Too bad.

Parallel story of a Cuban family—drug addict daughter, grandmother still in Cuba, unlikely unaccompanied minor tossed in. It was ok but I didn‘t feel like the characters connected in any meaningful way. Easy read so I finished it.

Obsessed with this cover 😍

First book for the new book group I‘m starting at work… I listened to this one, and there is so much packed into this, and with timelines that jump around a bit that I think I would have benefited from sitting and reading more slowly. There is a lot of pain here, from immigration to addiction and so much in between and I love that it is purely told from the female characters. They have a lot to say.

I think I‘d have to read this book again to truly glean more from it. It‘s written from the perspective of multiple characters in multiple times lines, jumping back and forth, but I enjoyed how that helped unfold the story piece by piece. All the perspectives are women, and they are all flawed, but also I could appreciate them in different ways. This book deals with many hard topics, but it‘s a beautiful reflection on some immigrant experiences.

#OctoberReads
#HispanicHeritageMonth
#HispanicAuthors

Beautifully heartbreaking. Well written, although the time hops for the main character were a little confusing. I had to flip back a few times to keep the timeline straight in my head, but I don't feel it was bad enough to deter someone from continuing to read.

"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."
-Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt: A Novel

I wanted to love this book, but the prose was pedestrian and overwrought, the characters were underdeveloped (especially Gloria), and the ending was far too sentimental.

This book was too disjointed with the different storylines. The different perspectives didn‘t track even in such a short book. There were interesting themes that could have been powerfully conveyed but didn‘t hold together.

Several women consider motherhood and responsibility amidst problems with addiction and ICE. Especially loved the Cuba flashbacks.

When a friend told me this was the best book she‘s read all year, I had to run right out and buy a copy. Unfortunately, all the books have the “gma book club selection” printed right on the cover. I hate that. Why can‘t the celebrity endorsements use stickers?!

Nearly impossible to put down, so so good. This is an intergenerational novel of immigration to America and lives in home countries. There is so much pain that runs through families and impacts lives farther in the future than they can know.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This book was beautifully written. I really liked reading about each generation‘s female experience as an immigrant in America and living in Cuba contrasted with a mother and daughter illegal immigrants and their experience with deportation. My favorite sequence was home with the panther. Recommend. This was my #bookspinbingo No. 24 pick.

Changing formats made me fall for this book!

The audiobook suffered due to a single, mediocre narrator for many women. Plus, this was marketed as a novel, not the interconnected short stories it reads as.

After I changed my mindset and switched to print, this is now an enthusiastic pick! Garcia shares the rich tapestry of a Cuban family from the 1800s until now. Contrasting them are a Salvadoran mom and daughter who have a different immigration.

I loved Garcia‘s writing style, the short chapters hopping across generations to form background on each character, and the characters were flawed, yet easy to like and root for. My only complaint with the book is that I wanted it longer! She packed in a lot in 240 pages, and I wanted another chapter on each character. Great book!

Honestly I was really unimpressed with this book. It felt…unedited. Why start a book with a family tree and put an x in it if you literally never mean to discuss it? Why include a stray cousin in Cuba who gets half of one story and then shunted to the sidelines? Why why why? So much of this book felt like it had potential and then went nowhere.

Interconnected short stories focussing on the experiences of several generations of women from a Cuban family both in Cuba and in Florida, exploring mother daughter relationships and what is lost, as well as what is gained, by immigration. There are also stories about the experiences of illegal immigrants. Interesting, but not as impactful as it might have been.

Book 70
A well-written literary novel about multiple generations of Cuban and Cuban-American women. The story jumps timelines, locations, and protagonists, which is initially confusing; it all comes together beautifully in the end, though. Themes of immigration, motherhood, and addiction. I'll watch for more by Garcia in the future. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Started as a collection of stories and then was developed into a novel. It shows the seams of that transition. Strong debut novel and I will be interested in what the author writes next. 3 🌟

I finished this book frustrated that my opinion was a so-so because my expectations were high. I then researched the author and learned why and how she wrote this story. I essentially reread the book and it became a pick. So I‘d recommend doing a bit of author research before falling into this one.

This is beautifully written, heartfelt, filled with intensity and joy afraid of exploring trauma. Women are not a monolith — perspective colors everything.

A novel, but more like a collection of short stories, which would have been confusing at first but I read some reviews before starting this, which prepared me for the format. The storyline moves back and forth through time and from different perspectives, all women, interconnected. We don‘t find out exactly how things are connected right off the bat which makes it difficult to orient in the story. A very strong sense of place and lyrical writing.

Vacation 2021. Cabo.

This one was just too depressing. #page158subscription @sudalu

This non-linear novel explores the women of 2 different families as they move through life and the echoes of violence and tragedy reverberate. I thought it was great but I understand why the structure isn‘t working for everyone. Ultimately, I felt it came together in a lovely way.

I was in Barnes & Noble (Yay)and this post has nothing to do with the content of these titles, but is anyone else sick of this cover design ? Did they fire the art department? Swoopy colors & the same typeface over and over? Sheesh!

Oh my goodness... don't even know how to start this. I felt like this book was all over the place with all the different timelines. Couldn't connect with any of the characters or really enjoy any of the storylines because I felt like there wasn't a beginning thought and an end thought with the stories. I really wanted to like this because I seen it advertised everywhere. Was just not for me. D

This book made me weep. My life is so different from the women in these stories. Yet my pain is not. We are force. We are more than we think. Beautiful prose, easy read. Emotional truth.

“But no mother on the outside could possibly know what it was to face a truth like the one she‘d been presented with: that it was her own love killing her daughter”

If I had gone in understanding that this was more an interconnected collection of short stories, I would‘ve enjoyed it more. There‘s so much to unpack here - addiction, deportation, immigration, cancer, sexual assault, Bautista in Cuba plus time in Mexico and El Salvador. Add in that it covers the 20th and 21st centuries, it just really is too much to form a cohesive narrative in under 300 pages!! I had a hard time orienting myself ⬇️

This multi-generational story follows Cuban women who face abuse, deportation, addiction, etc. It switches POVs & jumps from the 19th to 21st centuries. It was hard to follow at times, but you slowly see the lives of the women weaving together. It feels like a short story collection & I enjoyed some sections more than others. The theme broken women & what they must do to survive. The writing is beautiful & I look forward to more from the author.

🎧Started this today so far so good!