Title & author
Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
Synopsis
In Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt, Garcia explores how multiple truths and identities can exist concurrently, particularly for immigrant women of color living within a society that enforces white supremacist values and beliefs. Ultimately, she paints a portrait of women and survival—how the fight to build a life for oneself in such a society is not one-size-fits-all, nor as simple as “good” versus “bad.” Rather, such individuals must do whatever it takes to exist, whether that means assimilation into, rebellion against, and/or manipulation of white culture.
Who should read this book
Fans of Isabel Allende or The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
What we’re thinking about
The “more” in certain women.
Trigger warning(s)
Physical violence, sexual violence, substance abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, slurs, sexism, mental health, racism, xenophobia
There’s a western, societal misconception that only one truth can exist at once: that either someone is something, or they aren’t. And these binaries taint every facet of our lives, from who we think people should be, to the treatment we think people deserve. In Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt (Flatiron Books, 2021), Garcia explores how multiple truths and identities can exist concurrently, particularly for immigrant women of color living within a society that enforces white supremacist values and beliefs. Ultimately, she paints a portrait of women and survival—how the fight to build a life for oneself in such a society is not one-size-fits-all, nor as simple as “good” versus “bad.” Rather, such individuals must do whatever it takes to exist, whether that means assimilation into, rebellion against, and/or manipulation of white culture.
“Women? Certain women? We are more than we think we are. There was always more” (Garcia, 204). What Garcia accomplishes in Of Women and Salt is a sweeping, intergenerational tale of two families and the women that comprise them. An immigrant who left Cuba and settled in Florida, Carmen assimilates into her community. Living in a wealthy complex, wearing Ralph Lauren pantsuits with pearls (a brand commonly associated with America), and throwing Thanksgiving dinners at which she envisions herself as Martha Stewart (one of the most American holidays and the model of American entertainment), Carmen’s life largely resembles that of the mythical “American Dream.” Though her daughter Jeanette presses her mother to share why she left Cuba, Carmen wonders “why anyone left a place only to reminisce” (Garcia, 99). Carmen’s instinct is to blend in for survival, refusing to look back, building a life for herself and for Jeanette. But Garcia carefully crafts how this identity of Carmen—an immigrant woman living the supposed American dream—coexists with one precariously straddling the xenophobic norms ingrained in America, suggesting the cost of such assimilation. “Some of those same Cubans said, these new Cubans, coming now...they are not like us. They also said immigrants from other countries weren’t like them. Like us,” (101). Though Carmen does not believe herself to be like these individuals, she encourages Jeanette to call the police on an undocumented child. And not without cause—if she doesn’t, Carmen believes the life she has built for herself and Jeanette risks complete collapse.
After that same child, Ana, is deported with her mother, the duo begins working for a white woman in Irapuato, Mexico. And later, after her mother’s passing, though “she was only thirteen, Ana was not afraid of death...so she faced the river brave” (188). With a group of strangers, Ana enters into the U.S. a second time. Here, “she made her way toward a sandy path...huddled deeper into the shadow of the bushes before her and thought of the promise she’d made her mother before she died—she’d survive, she’d fight” (194-5). Ana separates from the group, choosing to protect herself, just as she’d promised her mother, even if barely a teenager. She goes on to lie “about her age and [find] a job” (203). Just as Carmen survives through assimilation, Ana survives by doing what too many today would consider morally and legally “wrong.” Yet Garcia shows that this neat description of Ana’s actions is limited, problematic. While laws in the U.S. might define her acts as such, Ana must do what is necessary to protect and care for herself in a system that has been built to work against her.
Maydelis, Carmen’s niece, still lives in Cuba. Here, she encounters those like her cousin Jeanette who claim “‘the poverty is heartbreaking’” or those like the German “El Alemán” who claim “‘this is life’” (121). Both come from the western worlds, impressing and imprinting their definitions on the place Maydelis calls home. She wonders “what would it take to convince a German tourist to whisk me away?” and “what would it take to make a cousin send for me?” (122). Living in a place with an imperialist history and under the influence of vast, western interference, Maydelis knows how to play her audience to build a life for herself. In other words, the “hustle [her] husband doesn’t see as work” (120). And many would categorize her acts, just as those of Ana, as shameful, perhaps illegal. But again, living in a country that is geared to work against her, Maydelis depicts her limited options. Her actions cannot be labeled by a binary code, nor can Maydelis herself.
Again and again throughout Of Women and Salt, Garcia demonstrates how it is wrong to force a simple label on someone and force them into the corresponding punishment. And, also, that it is unethical and inhumane to believe someone “deserves” the life they receive because of said actions. The systems that control these binaries, that prevent true equity for all individuals, must be interrogated. In a year following an election that over and over again discussed “the Latino vote” as if a monolithic body and the revolutions in Cuba as if completely separate from the legacy of the U.S.’s actions, fighting against binary descriptions and depictions is increasingly important.
“Women? Certain women? We are more than we think we are. There was always more.”
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