Jul 5

Jul 5 Sabrina & Corina: Stories

Author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Publisher: One World
View on Goodreads

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

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.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. 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.

TL;DR Review

Sabrina & Corina is a collection of really, really good short stories about Latinas of indigenous ancestry. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t enjoy, and many I truly loved.

For you if: You like short stories and / or character- and human-driven plots.

Full Review

Sabrina & Corina is one of the best short story collections I’ve read. But don’t take my word for it: It was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.

Each story is about a woman who is Latina and indigenous. They take place in the American West, many in the present day, but some in different periods of history as well. I think what makes them all so good is that each one has a unique spark — an impression, a lesson, a meaning — that shines through, but they also all feel connected, like I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the women from each story were related to one another.

I ended up listening to the audiobook while I was riding in the car on a road trip, and after every story I’d pull out Evernote to jot down my emotions and takeaways so that I could transfer them to my reading journal later. Also, each story is read by a different narrator, and it was very well done.

I think my favorite stores were the title story “Sabrina & Corina” (just wow), “Sisters” (what an incredible feat of understated tension and suspense), and “Tomi” (my heart!). But really, they all spoke to me in some way, and there isn’t one I didn’t truly enjoy.