This month, in the Jen Hatmaker Book Club, we’re celebrating the change of seasons. After enduring the sweltering heat this summer, nothing sounds more cozy than curling up with a good book, wearing your favorite oversized sweater and hunkering down in your favorite reading nook to welcome the falling leaves and falling temps (if you’re in the south, and still sweltering, like us, just bump that AC down a few clicks and go with us here).  And if you’re not a member of the club, you’re not going to want to miss out on the conversations with authors around amazing books we’re reading together. Jump on over to jenhatmakerbookclub.com  to sign up! Now, on to this month’s author–if you’re anything like Jen, a book filled with family drama, unique characters, and a really compelling storyline is the perfect fall read. And this author does not disappoint. We’re talking with novelist Gabriela Garcia about her book Of Women and Salt.  Gabriela is the daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, raised in Miami, and currently living in the Bay Area. Her fiction and poetry have both appeared in Best American Poetry and have received rewards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award and a Steinbeck Fellowship.  With Of Women and Salt, Gabriela weaves an intergenerational story that takes us from From Cuba to Miami, featuring three generations of Cuban women, exploring themes of trauma, motherhood, addiction, love, and, immigration. We see the growing possibility of a better life passed down from each generation as well as the all too human aspects of regret and anger each generation feels for what they gave up for the next one. 

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Thought-Provoking Quotes

“I was really interested in how we're all sort of born into a story that's already been happening without us. Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we have access to it fully or not.“ - Gabriela Garcia

“Who gets to be a mother? How do we define motherhood? What makes a good mother? And how much of that is also just based circumstantially on what resources are available? There was so much there in all of those relationships that I was interested in exploring.” - Gabriela Garcia

“I think with women, and especially immigrant women, often strength and sacrifice are so fetishized. I wanted to sort of explore what it means to survive within these patriarchal structures, within these violent worlds…and you don't always survive. You don't always come out triumphant.” - Gabriela Garcia

“I think there's so much room for men to be messy, or complicated, and so much pressure on women to just offer stories of resilience and strength. So I think it means a lot [to me] just to be able to write about these complicated, complex, sometimes very messy women, and to have so many people connect to it.” - Gabriela Garcia 

Gabriela’s LinksGabriela’s Website

Gabriela’s Instagram

Books & Resources Mentioned in This EpisodeOf Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

If Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

When The Mountains Sing, I Dance by Irena Sola

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