Beautiful and tragic, Of Women and Salt follows five generations of women in Cuba, Mexico and Miami. A story about immigration, mothers and daughters, and the often difficult choices and sacrifices women make for their families. We had the pleasure of asking Gabriela Garcia five questions on everything from the inspiration behind her sweeping debut, the unforgettable women readers meet throughout her story, to what she’s reading and recommending right now. 

Can we talk about the gorgeous chapter titles? Did you originally think of this as more of a story collection than a novel? How did Of Women and Salt start for you? 

I love novels with chapter titles, and I like the work titles can do to shape meaning, to be in conversation with the rest of the text. I wasn’t entirely sure about the novel’s shape when I started. I knew I didn’t want a traditional linear structure, that I wanted the chapters to feel the way memories and histories feel — fractured, like glimpses and echoes with some spaces of unknowing. When I started writing I thought maybe the chapters would function as linked short stories, but then I started adding in some pieces that didn’t work as standalone stories, and I gave myself permission to not have to define the structure and just let it be.

Jeanette, Carmen, Dolores, and Gloria are just some of the unforgettable women readers meet in your book. Who showed up first when you sat down to write Of Women and Salt?

Even though the novel is nonlinear and moves back and forth in time, I wrote most of the chapters in the order in which they appear. I started with María Isabel, who is the only woman in a cigar workshop in 19th century Cuba, because I’d just visited an exhibit in Cuba of letters from Victor Hugo to Cuban independence fighters and workers and became fascinated by that exchange between the literary and the political during a moment of vast inequities in Cuba. I started to imagine all the reverberations that moment would have, all the ways it could shape generations to come even if they had no idea who María Isabel was or if they’d long ago left Cuba.

Birds, Les Misérables, cigar-rolling, The Cuban Revolution, detention centers, addiction; there’s so much background to your novel. Let’s talk about your process for a minute. Did you start with the story and characters and layer in your research? Or did the research help to mold the narrative?

It was a little of both. I’d do a lot of reading and research before I’d sit down to write, but then as I’d write I’d inevitably get to a question — what would a character wear at this point in time? What toy would this child be playing with? etc — and I’d have to look into it. Often the research took me in directions I hadn’t even expected. Some of the research was also just drawing on my own experiences — the years I spent organizing with Women in detention for example. I had to confirm some of the details I remembered.

What surprised you the most when you were writing this book? The ending is perfect; organic and inevitable. We don’t want to give anything away, but did you know where things were going when you first sat down to write?

I did not. When I first started envisioning the novel’s shape, I had a totally different ending in mind, a totally different plot shape. And then I started to write and better understand each character, and that original ending no longer felt earned, no longer felt right. The actual ending I landed on is a complicated ending, not happy but open to possibilities, and felt true to the characters.

We love to ask: What are you reading and recommending right now? 

There are so many excellent books publishing in the next few months! Right now, I’m reading Anthony Veasna So’s Afterparties, a short story collection centered on a Cambodian American community in California that is so bright and funny and elegant. I’m also really excited about Wild Tongues Can’t Be Tamed, an anthology of Latinx writers interrogating identity and myth edited by The Bronx Is Reading founder Saraciea J. Fennell and featuring some of my favorite writers.

The post Victor Hugo, Cuban Independence and the Resilience of Women: Five Question for Gabriela Garcia, Author of Of Women and Salt — Our April Discover Pick appeared first on Barnes & Noble Reads.