Sabrina & Corina: Stories

By kali Fajardo-Anstine

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9780525511311

kali Fajardo-Anstine

Kali Fajardo-Anstine es originaria de Denver, Colorado. Es autora de Sabrina y Corina, libro finalista del National Book Award, del PEN / Robert W. Bingham Prize, del LaVerne Harrell Fiction Prize, del Story Prize, del Saroyan Prize y ganador de un American Book Award. También fue galardonada con el Addison M. Metcalf Award por la American Academy of Arts and Letters. Su obra ha sido reconocida con el Denver Mayor's Global Award for Excellence in Arts & Culture y el Mountainsand Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Award. Ha escrito para el New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, Oprah Daily, The American Scholar, Boston Review, entre otros, y ha recibido becas de MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook y Tin House. Recibió su MFA en la Universidad de Wyoming y trabajó más de una década como librera independiente en Westside Books, en el norte de Denver. Ha vivido por todo el país, desde Durnago, Colorado, hasta Key West, Florida, y fue invitada a impartir la 2022–23 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing en la Universidad Estatal de Texas.

Book preview

SUGAR BABIES

Though the southern Colorado soil was normally hard and cakey, it had snowed and then rained an unusual amount that spring. Some of the boys in my eighth-grade class decided it was the perfect ground for playing army. They borrowed shovels and picks from their fathers’ sheds, placing the tools on their bicycle handlebars and riding out to the western edge of our town, Saguarita, a place where the land with its silken fibers of swaying grass resembled a sleeping woman with her face pressed firmly to the pillow, a golden blonde by day, a raven-haired beauty by night.

The first boy to hit bone was Robbie Martinez. He did so with the blunt edge of a rusted shovel. Out of the recently drenched earth, he lifted a piece of brittle faded whiteness and tossed it downwind like nothing more than a scrap of paper. Look, he said, kneeling as if he was praying. Everybody come look.

The other boys gathered around. There in the ground lay broken pieces of bowls with black zigzagging designs. Next to those broken bowls were human teeth, scattered like dried kernels of yellow corn. Above them the sun had begun to fade behind the tallest peak of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The sky was pale and bleak, like the bloated belly of a lizard passing above.

Don’t touch it, Robbie said. None of it. We need to tell somebody.

And tell they did. The entire town. Everyone, it seemed, was a witness.

---

—

Days after their discovery, our final eighth-grade project was announced. We gathered in the gym for an assembly. The teachers brought together the boys from technical education class and the girls from home economics. We sat Indian style in ten rows beneath dangling ropes and resting basketball hoops. The room smelled like a tennis ball dipped in old socks and the cement walls were padded in purple vinyl—supposedly to minimize dodgeball injuries. I thought it looked like a loony bin.

Mrs. Sharply, a bug-eyed woman with a neck like a giraffe’s but a torso like a rhino’s, stood before us on a wooden box. For the remaining two weeks of your junior high career, she said, you will care for another life. She then reached behind her into a paper grocery bag, revealing a sack of C & H pure cane sugar. Sugar babies. We will be raising our very own sugar babies.

Older kids had gossiped about notorious school projects. We had heard stories of piglet dissections, the infamous growing and changing unit, rocket launches with carbon dioxide canisters, and a cow’s lung blackened and doused in cigarette smoke, but no one had warned us about this.

Sugar babies are a lot of responsibility, Mrs. Sharply said as she stepped down from her box and paced with the sugar sack. She explained we were to be graded on skills like feeding, bonding, budgeting, and more. She then passed around diaper directions.

We do it all alone? It was Solana Segura. She was behind me, her perpetual whimper causing every sentence to end like a little howl. Like single moms and stuff?

Somewhere, down the rows, a boy croaked, "But the DNA shows I am not the father."

We chirped with laughter until Mrs. Sharply held up two fingers, signaling silence. Of course not. You’ll be in committed partnerships. We’re drawing names.

A teacher’s aide in Payless flats scurried like a magician’s assistant toward Mrs. Sharply. She carried two Folgers cans decorated in pink and blue glitter. Mrs. Sharply set down her sugar, taking the cans from the aide and giving each a good shake. From the pink can, the first name she pulled was Mimi Yazzie, who stood and slinked forward, burying her face into her arms as Mrs. Sharply called out her partner, Mike Ramos. This cycle of humiliation lasted for several more rounds before I was partnered with Roberto Martinez, the bone boy.

After school, Robbie and I sat outside on the swings. He was a scrawny kid with frequently chapped lips and a light dusting of freckles across his low nose. He played soccer and always wore a beat-up blue windbreaker and knockoff Adidas sneakers, with four stripes instead of three. The sugar baby was planted snug in his lap, balanced ever so gently between his two stick-arms. His dark eyes were so big and wide they resembled two brown pigeon eggs and he spoke with a quavering, squeaky voice. They said we have to name it. Do you want to pick it out, Sierra?

No, you name it. I swung up. And you take it home tonight. I swung down. I’ll watch it tomorrow, but only if I have to.

That’s cool, he said. What about Miranda? That’s my grandma’s name.

Whatever, I sighed, leaning back on the swing. Name it after your grandmother. Name it after your entire family. I don’t care. I pumped until the rusted chain pulled taut. Then I jumped, landing in the mushy gravel with both feet. I took off for home.

---

—

Ain’t that something, my father said as he and I ate breakfast the next morning. On our small black-and-white TV above the microwave, aerial shots of the dig site were being shown on the news. The land appeared as an enormous shadow box with scraps of ancient people instead of thimbles and porcelain knickknacks.

Can we go see it? I asked, spooning my last bit of cornflakes into my mouth.

I suspect they don’t want us to do that, he said, keeping his eyes to the TV. There were deep lines around his eyelids, his hair was purely silver, and his hands were spotted from years of working as a roofer beneath the Colorado sun. People had begun to mistake him for my grandfather.

Why not? We should be allowed to. I walked to the sink and tossed my dirty dish inside. "It’s where we’re from. It’s our people."

My father scratched his chin. There was a thin turquoise ring on his finger where there had once been a gold wedding band. Don’t leave a dish in the sink, he said. How many times I got to tell you that, Sierra?

I turned back and soaped up my bowl. I mean it. I want to go.

Things like this have always happened around here. It’s nothing special.

I told him it was new to me as I scrubbed my dish with a green and yellow sponge, the milky water gargling loudly down the drain’s black rubber lips. As I rinsed the bowl once more, I peered through the window above the sink. The morning was clear and in the distance the mountains were crystal blue like an enormous wave. As if sailing across those waters, a small white pickup truck with a front-end bra pulled down our street and rumbled over the gravel in our driveway. Long dark hair clouded the truck’s windshield and very red and very long fingernails were coiled around the steering wheel. A silver rosary dangled above the dash.

Papa, I called over my shoulder, drying my hands on my jeans.

My father rose and stood tall behind me, smelling of leather and dirt. Looks like she’s back again. He grunted some, swishing spit around inside his mouth before shooting a stream of yolky bile into the sink. Go outside, Sierra. Say hello to your mother.

My mother first left three years earlier. It happened one morning after she cooked breakfast. I watched as she gathered her keys and coat and walked into our wintry yard without any shoes. She left footprints as slight as bird tracks in the snow. When I asked my father later why she had left, he simply said, Sometimes a person’s unhappiness can make them forget they are a part of something bigger, something like a family, a people, even a tribe.

My mother occasionally would come home for a day or two to gather forgotten necklaces or purses, though over time my father moved her things from the bedroom to a box in the crawl space. Her visits were infrequent enough that I learned to live without her. It wasn’t easy at first. Sometimes I’d hear a funny story at school or church and my first thought would be, You have to tell Mama. But over time that urge to be with her, to tell her things, to be a part of her, it went away. Just like she always did.

---

—

On my mother’s first night back, she couldn’t find an apron so she made dinner in one of my father’s old T-shirts. With the kitchen TV up loud on Entertainment Tonight, she cooked pork chops sizzled in their own fat and smothered in green chili. Whenever I’d glance up from my math homework on the coffee table, I’d catch glimpses of her in the kitchen rummaging through junk drawers and cabinets. I wondered what she was searching for and thought to offer my help, but I realized I didn’t care if my mother found anything in our home again.

When she finally called my father and me to the big table, I pulled my sugar sack—Miranda Martinez-Cordova—from my backpack. Dinnertime, I whispered, admiring the face I had given her with a Sharpie. Her eyes were big and wide with short lines for lashes. Her mouth was a blissfully flat smirk.

Your favorite, my mother said, handing a plate to my father. He casually spun it above his head and eased into his seat at the table. The two of them were acting as if nothing had happened, as if my mother had always been there cooking in the kitchen. I felt like my father was a liar, someone who could pretend everything was fine when, really, how could he be anything but sad?

Do you want something to drink, Sierra? asked my mother.

No, I said, covering Miranda’s mouth. I don’t want anything.

Nonsense, said my mother. You’re becoming a woman. Women need vitamins and nutrients. You’ll have some milk.

My mother opened a cupboard, the small one beside the stove where the glasses had once been, but my father corrected her with a flick of his knife. Left of the sink.

My mother tilted her head and steadied her mouth into a tight smile. After pouring the milk, she placed the glass in front of me and quickly glanced at Miranda. Robbie had dressed her in one of his little sister’s old striped pink onesies. Does your doll want a plate?

She’s not a doll. And she’s way too young for solids.

My mother laughed and took her seat, closing her eyes while my father led us in prayer. Miranda and I kept our eyes open. My mother had taken off the old T-shirt and wore a blue dress with white-embroidered flowers that had many loose threads. Her lips were thinner and her black hair was shorter than I remembered. She used to only wear silver, but she had on a gold necklace, the thin braided chain glowing against her bronze skin.

After we said amen, my parents made the sign of the cross and my mother opened her reddish-brown eyes. Her eye makeup appeared as a buildup of silt. You know, she said, turning to me, I thought we were out of salt. I was going to have you run next door to ask Mrs. Kelly if we could borrow some.

She’s dead. I hunched down and rested my chin on Miranda’s head.

What?

She’s not alive anymore.

My father gently said, Old Mrs. Kelly passed away last winter, Josie.

My mother mouthed an Oh and looked at her plate. She briskly apologized and we continued dinner in silence. Above us the ceiling fan spun in rapid circles, slicing the air, sending waves of coolness over each of us. My mother and father kept glancing at one another—smiling, chewing, smiling, sipping, and smiling some more. After some time, I got sick of their cheeriness and gulped the last of my milk. Then, as loud as possible, I slammed my empty glass on the table.

"So, Josie, I said, what brings you down from Denver? Or do you normally drive around cooking pork chops for people?"

Sierra, my father barked. Don’t you call your mother by her first name. He shook his head and I avoided his strict gaze.

My mother smiled sweetly. Tell me about all those Indian graves the boys from your school found out west.

My stomach suddenly lurched with the sounds of digestive failure. I don’t know anything about it, I said, stroking Miranda.

Sure you do, my father interjected. That Roberto Martinez, the boy who found the bones, he’s your partner for that sugar thing. Your school project.

To think, my mother said. This whole time those bones were right in Saguarita beneath our feet.

That’s not true, I said. "They weren’t beneath your feet."

She giggled a bit. I was here for a long while, Sierra. I think I know a thing or two about Saguarita.

Though I wanted to tell her she didn’t know about anything, I turned my face to my lap and went quiet. After dinner, I sat in my room, where I pressed my ear against the cool white door. Muffled and low, I could hear my father in the living room ask my mother about her drive—road conditions, springtime flurries, if the mountain goats hobbled along the pass. He didn’t ask why she was back or if she missed us—questions that hurt me to think about. I moved away from the door and tossed Miranda into the corner.

---

—

She cried all night. I didn’t get any sleep, I told Robbie the next morning as I shoved Miranda into his arms. We met outside thirty minutes before school in our usual spot by the swings. It was chilly and the air smelled like pancake breakfast and frost.

How could she cry? he asked. She’s only sugar.

The sun was coming up. The light leaked over the land in velvety streaks of pinks and golds. My mother once told me this meant the angels were baking cookies. Isn’t that what babies do? Cry and crap themselves and cry some more?

Hey, Robbie said, his chapped mouth bunched to the side. Where’s her outfit?

Lost it.

Robbie sighed and bent down to his backpack. He pulled a diaper from the front mesh pocket. Give her here. We’ll lose points if she’s wearing the same diaper from last night. He lay Miranda on the loose gravel and frowned at the new sad, sleepy face I had given her that morning. Her eyelashes were tarantula-like and her mouth was downturned. Robbie fumbled with the diaper, applying and reapplying the adhesive sides.

So, I said, standing above him, what was it like?

What was what like, Sierra?

Finding those dead people. Was it scary?

Robbie got the diaper to stick. He patted Miranda’s black marker face and stood up with a bounce. Not scary, he said. But it was weird, you know? We’ve lived here our whole lives and no one knew about all this old stuff in the ground.

I guess, I said, thinking of the piñon trees where my father had hung a bluish hammock in our yard. Their roots, he said, had undoubtedly grazed the dead bodies of our ancestors, both Spanish and Indian. I used to play in the shade of those piñons, cracking their nuts with two rocks held firmly in my hands. After pulling away the hard shells, I’d toss the spongy insides into my mouth. I didn’t swallow them, though. I was afraid of letting any amount of death, from the soil or elsewhere, work its way into me. "Everything is old here. I mean everything."

Robbie nodded. He was rocking Miranda back and forth in such a way I’d only seen small girls do with dolls. I heard your mom’s back again. My grandma saw her buying pork chops at Rainbow Market.

I kicked at the gravel, scuffing my Mary Janes. Dust flew between us. The bitch is back.

Robbie pretended to cover Miranda’s ears. Dude, he said, don’t call your mom a bitch. What if Miranda called you a bitch?

Guess it’s a good thing babies can’t talk, I said. Especially ones made of sugar.

Robbie was smiling and had lifted Miranda into the air. He briefly held her against the sky before bringing her back down. Remember when your mom was our group leader for Day on the Prairie?

Yeah, I said, lowering my voice.

And we all got lost looking for that old barn she said was haunted? Then she let us eat three packs of Oreos? And you had to go to the bathroom in the bushes. Robbie laughed, but I frowned and he quickly turned serious. Why is she back this time?

The school bell sounded. Class was starting in ten minutes. We reached for our backpacks and walked toward the front doors. I lifted Miranda from Robbie’s arms. Who knows with that woman? Maybe she wants to see the dig site. Or maybe she likes taking vacations to her old life.

---

—

Within a week, my mother blended into our home as well as Miranda did. Which is to say, not very well at all. When it was just my father, he worked late and usually only had time to heat up a frozen pizza or fix a box of macaroni. Our small purple house was often messy, though we each had a chore list that was conquered by Sunday. With my mother back, the home took on a new order, a different rhythm. She cooked unhealthy but comforting foods, the house constantly emitting a pungent odor of bacon grease and red chili powder. Other times she cleaned. She’d twirl around with a broom, swaying her hips to the music on the radio—an oldies station or some honky-tonk crap. Most evenings, after my father came home from work, he’d unlace his boots in the foyer and then move his arm along my mother’s slight waist. Together they’d rock back and forth to the music. It was nauseating.

Each day after school, I’d come home to discover that my mother had made my bed and placed my stuffed animals in a dog pile above my pillows. I’d immediately throw them to the floor. With a detergent that reeked of artificial springtime and cottony clouds, she also did my laundry, taking the time

Reviews for Sabrina & Corina

[lindoula-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Disclaimer: I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A great collection of short stories largely revolving around family, especially coming of age and staking your own place within your family. There's also a Latin American and/or indigenous American cultural background running through the heart of every story. It's not done as an afterthought - like some authors who try too hard and just insert a sprinkling of Spanish words every now and then - but well woven into the narrative.

I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone looking for contemporary American short stories.

[untitled841 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sabrina & Corina
A strong sense of place resides through these stories. From city skylines that reflect gentrification changes to the intimate interiors of homes and apartments that carry great meaning to personal life journies.
Its interesting the things you remember when monumental moments happen

Julian Plaza
Death isn't always the same expierance.

Galapago
The memories.
"When they were first in the family, on either side, to own property."

Tomi
Something struck a cord with me in the blooming relationship between Tomi and Cole.
Family home, reading struggles and a bond between Aunti and nephew. While I don't relate to the same situations Cole expierance. There was a distance between me and my family after the tragedy of death.

Ghost Sickness
Not passed down or forgotten.
Struggling to capture it all Anna frantically documents anything spoken in class about the topic.

[marthajeanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm taking this back to the library after reading half of it. It's not bad, but just doesn't resonate with me. I think it's great that the author wants to portray people like her, but their concerns aren't mine.

[bibliophageoncoffee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An impressive debut. Beautifully written, powerful stories with memorable characters. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author in the future.

[books9n9pickles · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely beautiful. I knew from the first few pages of the first perfectly constructed story that this was the work of a master. Look, my company published Trust Exercise and I liked it a lot, too, but I do think that if it weren't for that book's meta-literariness (catnip to book nerds), then Sabrina & Corina probably should have won the National Book Award. I can't wait to read more of Fajardo-Anstine's work!

5 stars and instantly going on my new "to re-read" list.

First read, favorite stories:
Sugar Babies
Sabrina & Corina
Sisters
Cheeseman Park
Tomi
All Her Names

That's half the book isn't it? Aiyah!

One thing I particularly loved was that, even if every story could stand on its own, there were some recurring characters woven into other stories. Only in one case, I think, did a side character later get their own story, but the way these women touched each others lives from a distance underscored their commonalities. One major recurring theme was abandonment by a parent, sometimes a white one. A quote from "Sisters" about white men viewing Latina and Chicano women as exotic arm candy hints heavily at part of the problem, and I can't help but think back to Cherie Moraga's brother in Native Country of the Heart, who abandoned his birth family to devote himself to his white wife.

As I said, I'll be reading this again. There's so much to digest in short stories.


Quote Roundup

p. 44) I thought of all the women my family had lost, the horrible things they'd witnessed, the acts they simply endured. Sabrina had become another face in a line of tragedies that stretched back generations. And soon, when the mood hit my grandmother just right, she'd sit at her kitchen table, a Styrofoam cup of lemonade in her warped hand, and she'd tell the story of Sabrina Cordova--how men loved her too much, how little she loved herself, how in the end it killed her. The stories always ended the same, only different girls died, and I didn't want to hear them anymore.
This systemic violence against Latinas/Chicanas struck me as a bit of a parallel to police violence against black men.

p. 51) Doty felt white men treated her as something less than a full woman, a type of exotic object to display in their homes like a dead animal.
Ah, here's the "arm-candy" quote I mentioned above--significantly more profound and pointed than my dumb memory of it. I found this story, "Sisters," which featured a lesbian woman in the 1950s, one of the most poignant.

p. 128) The homeless man held his ground and the animal soon retreated, leaving the veranda silent once more. The woman with the infant thanked my mother, ignoring the homeless man as he retreated, slouched and small, back where he came.
Since I work in a soup kitchen, I was very touched by this portrayal of the homeless. I know so many good people who would do things like this, even when society treats all of them as invisible.

p. 138-139) "I've been looking at some photos of myself," she said. "Mostly from when I was with your father. I'm a little embarrassed. . . . I can tell how sad I look. It's something in my eyes. . . . But it changed."
I asked her how. . .
"The world did. It became less urgent, somehow bigger, and I didn't worry so much about being loved."
I'm fortunate never to have suffered this kind of serious domestic abuse, but I identify with Monica's mother's realization. I just got lucky. I got happy being alone, and then I grew happy being with someone else.


p. 204) For the remainder of class, Brown lectures, answers appropriate questions, and shakes her head, no, not quite, when a front-row student compares the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde to the grandeur of Notre Dame.
Oh, the irony overload in this sentence...


[Again, no idea if those dates are right or not]

[librolindsay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After living here nearly a year and a half, I've struggled to find soul in Colorado. This may be the first time I've felt it.

Believe the hype--this is a STELLAR book.

[drfuriosa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a rich and interesting collection of short stories about Latinx-Native American families with strong ties to the Denver area. Fajardo-Anstine is an engaging and vivid writer, and her characters leap off the pages. I'm definitely impatient for her next book. I count this a must-read.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is yet another exception to my avoidance of short story collections; thanks to Ted Chiang and others, the exceptions threaten to outnumber the rule.

These are vividly realistic stories about Latina women living in Denver and southern Colorado, dealing with racism and poverty, and accompanying issues like drug addiction. They're not really "downers"; there's hope and persistence and resistance. In one, Josie becomes a mother at 16, and may no longer be able to handle raising now 10 year old Sierra. In the title story, one cousin, Sabrina, is spectacularly beautiful and has high hopes, but the lack of opportunities drive her to drugs and promiscuity. Corina, plainer, tries to keep her cousin from completely going off the rails, while going to beauty school and trying to establish her own life. Other stories show the holes in our supposed social safety nets. In one, when a mother contracts breast cancer, there are no good options. Her husband's insurance doesn't cover worthwhile treatments, and he can't leave his job to help care for her. What they end up doing is a sad commentary on healthcare in this country.

This excellent collection is piercing, but never unhopeful.

[larryerick · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I knew little about this book when I started reading it. Since reading it, I have seen videos in which the author states her main purpose was to merely get a book out there that talked about people like her and her friends and family. Further, it seems it was marketed as primarily to tell more recent immigrants to Denver in Colorado about the not so distant Chicano culture in the Denver area and how certain neighborhoods have been changed. That's all well and good, but, as modest as these goals seem to me, the fact is there is more than ample evidence that this writer is more than just a little deserving of the book awards it's been in competition to receive. This is *really* solid writing. In doesn't suffer from any of the shortcomings I find so easily in many other fictional works, especially by newer authors. In some respects, it reminds me of a Latinx version of Wendell Berry's fictional Kentucky town of Port William, putting it at the top of the list of the most engaging fictional writing I have ever read to date. This book doesn't let the life lessons viewpoints shine through quite as clearly and as forcefully as Berry's, but...here's the thing: I don't predict she will eventually write the Great American Novel, but I do think she has the potential to do just that. If she finds a enough drive to assemble an epic about the life she grew up in and the lives she came in contact with, and the patience to link all of it together, she certainly has the writing chops to put it on paper with clarity and style. Very much looking forward to her next work.

[profh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very impressive collection of short stories. Some are much stronger than others, in fact the collection's high point is the first story "Sugar Babies." The writer has a tendency to construct each segment with mirroring characters. It is a technique that she seems to have a mastery over, but it will be really interesting to see if she will build a more independent character over the course of a novel. I'd love to hear more from the narrator of "Sugar Babies." Looking forward to the writer's next publication.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A stylish well conceived collection of short stories that deserve all the acclaim that they have received. The stories are full of the author's Latina culture and heritage. One thing I particularly appreciated was the total uniqueness of these stories. A couple I really liked were "Remedies" which tell of various treatments for ailments that were handed down through generations and "Sabrina and Corina" about cousins who travel down totally different paths in their lives. These tales are very strong start to finish.

[iudita_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was drawn to this book by it's beautiful cover and decided to read it based on it's high rating, but unfortunately it just didn't work for me. However I'm glad to see so many people enjoyed it because there is nothing largely problematic with the book. The writing and the nature of the stories just didn't suit me at all.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Her stance was wobbly and unrefined, as though she had given someone else permission to wear her skin. That's when I knew she was forever caught in her own undercurrent, bouncing from one deep swell to the next. She would never lift me out of that sea. She would never pause to fill her lungs with air. Soon the worlds would yank her chain of sadness against every shore, every rock, every glass-filled beach, leaving nothing but the broken hull of a drowned woman." Any Further West


In the above quote thirteen year old Casey is describing her mother, who we know doesn't live much into her thirties. All of the selections in this new collection are set in and around Denver, Colorado and involve women mostly, of Latina heritage, just like the author who can trace her family back to when Colorado was part of Mexico. Like all short story collections, some were stronger than others but all the stories in this collection are very good. Wonderful even.

Women are the stars here, in one way or another. The ones that stand out to me are the ones who looked trouble in the face and stood up to it eventually and against all odds. Drugs, alcohol, poverty.....all the usual suspects roam around the streets and lives of the characters in these stories. But somehow the warmth of these families comes through and one after the other someone steps forward and lends a helping hand or saves the day. In the title story, Sabrina has been strangled and her grandmother insists that Corina, who works in the make-up department at Macy's, be the one to apply the make-up for the open casket, " paying special attention to her neck." Family is everything in these stories. Outsiders are not welcome or especially useful. But family......

These characters exuded life and will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was expecting a lot from this book because I have seen such rave reviews about it. And it was fine, better than some of the short story collections I read last year, not as good as others. I don't love short stories though, they usually just leave me wanting more--about the characters, the place, the landscape, what happens next.

And that's what this book did. The stories take place in Denver and south/southwestern Colorado (with the exception of one that is largely in San Diego). I don't know this area well, the last time I was there was 3 years ago in Cortez. I am more familiar with northern New Mexico, and the climate/landscape is certainly similar. But she just touches on it, and doesn't dive deep in the place. Which is typical of short stories and part of what frustrates me about the medium.

Fajardo-Anstine's characters are Latinx or Native, with deep roots in Colorado. Their homes, neighborhoods, families, food, healing herbs. The culture is what shines through here more than the landscape--and the loss of culture through the loss of complete neighborhoods, intermarriage, death. A lot of these stories feature child of young adult narrators.

My favorite of the stories is All Her Names. I thought the setting in the railroad yard was excellent, and original. A place I have always found confusing, creepy, and terrifying.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This short story collection that is primarily set in Denver's Northside neighborhood among the Latinx community there. As the neighborhood gentrifies, the old homes are replaces with luxury housing and fewer and fewer of the original inhabitants remain. A few stories are set in a small town in northern New Mexico, where the same pattern holds; the locals don't stay.

There's a cohesiveness to the setting, but the stories themselves are varied. An elderly lady being is being urged to sell her house and move to a retirement community, a request she resists until an incident takes that choice away from her. A girl accompanies her mother when her mother decides to leave the home they share with her grandmother, for better opportunities in Los Angeles. A woman goes to live with her brother and his son when she is released from prison. A woman feels stifled by her affluent life and so sneaks back to her old neighborhood to hook up with an old boyfriend.

Each story is so perfect on its own, but made richer by its inclusion in the collection. I loved that the center of these stories is a neighborhood, and a neighborhood that changes over time.

[msf59 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! This is an impressive story collection. I love discovering a fresh new voice, and this young author delivers. Mostly female characters populate, these stories- mothers, daughters, sisters, cousins and friends and all of Latina heritage, living in the Denver metropolitan area. There is some joy found in these pages, but are struggles too, along with a hefty dose of grit. This was a National Book finalist and I clearly think it is deserving. Here is a sample of her lovely prose:

“Her stance was wobbly and undefined, as though she had given someone else permission to wear her skin. That's when I knew she was forever caught in her own undercurrent, bouncing from one deep swell to the next. She would never lift me out of that sea. She would never pause to fill her lungs with air. Soon the world would yank her chain of sadness against every shore, every rock, every glass-filled beach, leaving nothing but the broken hull of a drowned woman."

[lisapeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A terrific debut collection. Fajardo-Anstine is writing about a very specific slice of American culture—Western Chicanas of indigenous ancestry, set mostly in Colorado—but she never reverts to type or falls into any sort of shorthand. These stories are about the many permutations of love and family, and the (mostly) mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts here are wonderful creations. There is so much heart in this collection, and so much good writing as well. Really nicely done all the way through—a pleasure.

[hccpsk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

On the shortlist for this year’s National Book Award, Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine is a collection of stories about the American West and the people of color who live there. These short stories connect not only through the characters’ backgrounds, but through the Colorado location, where they all inhabit the same small towns and neighborhoods, and even use the same cemetery. They also connect through the themes of family and lives with missing pieces--mostly parents who left or died-- and the relationships between those left behind. Fajardo-Anstine constructs a beautiful, painful world of early deaths, grandparents, poverty, and addiction through these snippets of lives written in even smaller snippets that often flash back and forth through the characters' lives. This a gorgeous and interesting collection of stories doubtful to win the NBA, but certainly worth a read.

[bggirl_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

11 poignant, gut-wrenching stories told from the perspective of the indigenous Chicana community of Denver and Southern Colorado.

There aren’t many writers currently writing about Chicana Indigenous women. These stories, told in the voices of women of various ages deal with maternal loss, maternal abandonment, violence against women, poverty, addiction, and, ultimately survival.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine grew up in Colorado and it is clear throughout that she understands what her characters are going through. The stories are told with compassion and the women come alive on the page. There is no doubt in the reader’s mind that they are real, living, breathing women inhabiting the Colorado desert towns.

While there is no real connection between the stories, the common setting and the fleeting mention of a character from another story here and there, make the book cohesive and the shared heritage and experiences, authentic.

I must admit that I was painfully aware of my white privilege the entire time I was reading this book and of that fact that I know so little about the hardships portrayed in these stories that so many women endure on a daily basis.

As with all story collections, I found myself engrossed in some more than others. My two favorite stories were Remedies and Tomi, followed by Sisters and Any Further West, but this is undoubtedly a solid debut collection and I am excited to see what the author is going to give us next.