Ratings8
Average rating4.1
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Latinas of Indigenous descent living in the American West take center stage in this haunting debut story collection—a powerful meditation on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands. “Here are stories that blaze like wildfires, with characters who made me laugh and broke my heart.”—Sandra Cisneros WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE STORY PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual. Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal “Sabrina & Corina isn’t just good, it’s masterful storytelling. Fajardo-Anstine is a fearless writer: her women are strong and scarred witnesses of the violations of their homelands, their culture, their bodies; her plots turn and surprise, unerring and organic in their comprehensiveness; her characters break your heart, but you keep on going because you know you are in the hands of a master. Her stories move through the heart of darkness and illuminate it with the soul of truth.”—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents “[A] powerhouse debut . . . stylistically superb, with crisp dialogue and unforgettable characters, Sabrina & Corina introduces an impressive new talent to American letters.”—Rigoberto González, NBC News
Reviews with the most likes.
A lot of people are talking about this book for very good reasons. I enjoyed it especially as I've lived in Colorado most of the last 25 years or so, and it's always fun to read something set where you live. Fajardo-Anstine covers a lot of areas from East Colfax to the Sangre de Christos. What struck me most about her writing is that each story feels autobiographical, probably because most of the stories are in first person. However, a story can be written in first person and still not feel real. These all feel deeply real, like the only way to write about them would be from the heart of experience. Obviously, no one woman could live all the different lives in this story, but you can tell that Fajardo-Anstine is a good listener, able to capture such a huge diversity of voices in a single collection.
I say I've lived in CO most of my life and recognize a lot of the settings here, but this is a side of CO that is usually hidden from my suburban white self. It explores Denver's past and present and in particular the ways women of color are impacted in these familiar neighborhoods, for better and worse. It's a beautiful collection, a fast read, and highly deserving the accolades being heaped on it. If you, like me, are needing a bit more literary short fiction in your life, try this one.
Beautiful and dark stories with just enough character development to be interesting but no extraneous things bogging them down. Fantastic cultural imagery and lore.