Please join us for this Book Club presentation co-sponsored with AFAR Media
featuring our guest
Gabriela Garcia
Author of Of Women and Salt
____
Wednesday | 30 June 2021 | 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. EST
OF WOMEN AND SALT is the sweeping, masterful debut by Gabriela Garcia — about a daughter's fateful choice, a mother motivated by her own past, and a family legacy that begins in Cuba before either of them were born.
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.
From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals — personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others — that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women.
A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.
Note: readers who wish to participate can purchase their own copy of the book here
About Book Club events with AFAR Media
These collaborative book club events co-hosted by UNA-NYC and AFAR Media are currently in a virtual format online. AFAR is the world’s leading travel media brand that inspires and guides travelers to have deeper, richer, and more meaningful experiences. AFAR values a deep sense of cultural immersion and exploration, celebrating places and global diversity in many forms. Since AFAR believes that travel can change the world, why not let books be our literary ambassadors to guide new journeys?
We announce new book selections quarterly for our members and booklovers, and those who want to participate should purchase the book and register for the online discussion circle, when they'll be able to share their experiences — of where the journey took them, who they met along the way, and what new vistas of ideas and life horizons they encountered. Our book selections may be fiction or nonfiction, in translation or originally in English, and from a diverse range of authors who will help you get to know our world from their unique perspectives.
These conversations will take place virtually on Goodreads, and will be led by an AFAR editor in dialogue with the author of our featured books.
GABRIELA GARCIA
The daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, Gabriela Garcia is the author of the novel Of Women and Salt, published in several languages. Her fiction and poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Tin House, Zyzzyva, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and residencies and fellowships from Breadloaf, Sarabande Books, Lighthouse Works, the Keller Estate, and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. She has a BA in Sociology from Fordham University and an MFA in fiction from Purdue University, where she also taught creative writing.