Immigrant women’s voices echo in novel
Organizing work informs debut by Oakland’s Gabriela Garcia
Gabriela Garcia’s ambitious new novel “Of Women and Salt,” out Tuesday, March 30, lets readers know even before they read the first chapter that women’s lives and voices are central to the sprawling, multigenerational saga of interconnected immigrant stories.
Garcia, who grew up in Miami with a Cuban mother and Mexican father, included a diagram of a family tree dating from 1866 to the present — and includes only women’s names. Here are the grandmothers, mothers and daughters whose intimate struggles to understand themselves and their connections to the past are brought to vivid life in Garcia’s accomplished debut.
Twentysomething Floridian Jeanette, who’s deeply curious about her Cuban heritage, is recovering from drug addiction and an abusive relationship. Her young neighbor, Ana, is abandoned when her mother is taken from their house in an ICE raid. Maria Isabel, the family matriarch, is the sole woman working in a cigar factory in Camaguey, Cuba. One hundred years later, her granddaughter, Dolores, finally snaps in selfdefense after putting up with a violent husband for far too long.
Regardless of their era or immigration status, women in Garcia’s richly imagined portraits argue, dream and yearn to pass on their pride and ambitions to their daughters. They feel authentic, which is why “Of Women and Salt” is one of the publishing world’s most anticipated titles this spring.
After getting her master’s degree from Purdue University, where she was one of Roxane Gay’s star students, Garcia moved to Oakland in 2019 for the Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State University.
She recently spoke to The Chronicle by phone about drawing on her experiences of growing up surrounded by women, working as an organizer fighting migrant detention and deportation, and dispelling the myth of the monolithic immigrant experience.
Q: When I finished your novel, I was surprised it’s only 200 pages because it covers so much historical ground. What was the initial inspiration or idea?
A: I first wrote snippets of the Gloria section in the (Texas) detention center. Then, widening the lens, I knew I wanted to write a book that centered women and women’s voices. I grew up surrounded by women in a kind of matriarchy. My mother was a single mother and had all sisters, and my grandmother had all sisters. Even though there are men in the novel, I was interested in portraying that matrilineal family line and exploring all the ways that women come together, in family but also in chosen and circumstantial situations.
Q: Your first chapter takes us back to 1866 in a Cuban cigar factory where a lector reads aloud to the workers from writers like Dumas, Hugo and Shakespeare. It’s a fascinating look at literature influencing politics, history and even iconic Cuban branding. What inspired this section?
A: I attended an exhibit in Havana a few years back that displayed some archival letters from Victor Hugo to Cuban workers and independence fighters in the 19th century. I became fascinated by that interplay between these literary giants at that time and Cuban workers and political movements. My family was always into cigars, and I grew up around a lot of these cigars, the Montecristos and the Romeo and Julietas, and I never knew the origins of those names were actual books that became the names of the cigars. The history is so interesting. Q: How did the organizing work
you did against deportation and detention affect your writing?
A: I worked with a lot of individuals and families who were facing deportation during Obama’s first term. There were a lot of family separations, and deportations were ramping up nationwide. Then I worked opposing the growing detention system in the U.S. for the feminist organization UltraViolet. I wrote snippets of what would eventually become the novel during that time, and I was definitely thinking about a lot of those families who were facing deportation and their stories.
Q: Did your own family history provide insights into how differently immigrants are treated depending on when they arrived in the U.S. and from where, as well as their race and class?
A: I thought about that a lot. I’ve been aware my whole life, as the daughter of a Mexican father and
Cuban mother, that this idea of the “immigrant experience” felt false to me. Look at the fact that Cubans in the past were basically on an automatic path to citizenship once they got to the U.S. and had a lot of resources available to them. It was a completely different story for Mexican immigrants. I’ve always been interested in pushing back against the idea of immigrant identity as a monolith.
Another thing I was writing against was the trope of the sacrificing, suffering immigrant mother. Even though the mothers in the novel do sacrifice, they’re also full human beings. Gloria even admits her desire to not be a mother at times.
I wanted all of my characters to be flawed and trying their best in their own individual ways. I hope their multidimensionality comes through.