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Sabrina & Corina is the debut story collection from Kali Fajardo-Anstine, which gained notoriety as a National Book Award finalist this year. The collection centers itself in stories of indigenous Latinas living in the American West, mainly in the Denver area where Fajardo-Anstine grew up. The stories are structured around violence against women, whether it be cultural or physical, and explore how the inheritance of trauma can perpetuate this cycle of violence. The women in these stories are combatting abandonment, poverty, cultural erasure, and physical abuse, and Fajardo-Anstine guides them through these traumas without romanticization or false pity, but with a clear voice that shines a light on even the most painful truths. Fajardo-Anstine demands that her readers truly see these women and grapple with their pain, offering a radical reclamation of the American story. As author Sandra Cisneros writes in her blurb for the collection, “How tragic that American letters hasn’t met these women of the West before, women who were here before America was America. And how tragic that these working-class women haven’t seen themselves in the pages of American lit before. Thank you for honoring their lives, Kali.”
The collection overall feels incredibly cohesive, as the strands of place, cultural and spiritual inheritance, and trauma run strongly through every narrative. In addition, these narratives are enlivened by Fajardo-Anstine’s fresh and incisive voice. Every story in the collection feels essential, and more importantly, every story can stand on its own. In this review, I’ll limit myself to discussing the two stories that have stayed with me most since my initial reading.
This first story, “Sugar Babies”, is told from the perspective of a thirteen year old girl, Sierra, and begins with the discovery of buried skeletons and artifacts of Latinx people indigenous to the Denver area, the ancestors of Sierra and her classmates. The boy who found the bones, Robbie, ends up being Sierra’s partner for a home-economics project, where children are paired up and given a sack of sugar which they must successfully co-parent. Sierra’s apathy toward her sugar child is very much informed by the return of her mother, who after abandoning Sierra as a child, sometimes reemerges to spend time with her husband and daughter. Sierra is resentful of her mother and the independence that she has chosen over her daughter, although she is simultaneously drawn to her mother’s warmth and affection. Sierra’s struggles in parenting her imaginary child become mapped onto her own mother’s struggles as a young parent. She gave birth to Sierra at the age of 15, which she notes is only two years older than Sierra’s current age. The story is about what it means to be a mother, a caretaker, a woman, a human, and an indigenous Latina, and the strength it requires to inhabit these variant identities.
The titular story, “Sabrina and Corina”, is told from the perspective of a young woman, Corina, whose close-in-age cousin, Sabrina, is found dead after being strangled by one of her abusive boyfriends. After Sabrina’s death, Corina reflects back on the reasons that the two cousins had drifted apart, how Sabrina turned to alcohol and unpleasant men while Corina went to cosmetology school and become a store counter makeup artist. The two girls, who were once inseparable, rarely saw each other as they grew older, and when they did, they argued about each other’s lifestyle choices. The story is about the bonds of female companionship, and the ways that traumas can ravage entire families and communities, severing these once solid bonds. Corina watches her cousin become lifeless before her eyes, as the alcohol takes away her spirit and life force. After Sabrina’s funeral, Corina reflects, “these stories always ended the same, only different girls died, and I didn’t want to hear them anymore.”
Without going into any more depth, the other stories that most moved me were “Sisters,” Cheesman Park,” and “Tomi,” although there really aren’t any stories in the collection that can be missed. In a story collection like this, the act of writing becomes one of reclamation, a bold escapade to shove truths in the face of those who have long ignored their existence. In this way, Fajardo-Anstine patterns her resilient and spirited heroines after herself, and they all share the deeply human desire to be seen for what they are, a gift that the writer bestows on each and every one of them. The collection feels so searing and vital, but so readable, which is why it is an absolutely necessary addition to the American literary canon. It feels like a work that will open doors for Latina writers, and establishes Fajardo-Anstine as one of our most prized voices in contemporary fiction. I, for one, cannot wait to read what she is working on next.