Her new novelOf Women and Saltfollows a multigenerational family from current-day Miami to their native Cuba and back.
The daughter of Cuban and Mexican immigrants herself, Garcia wrote her own experiences into the book.
As the official synopsis says, “In present-day Miami, Jeanette is battling addiction.
Credit: MacMillan
Carmen
Miami, 2018
Jeanette, tell me that you want to live.
Yesterday I looked at photos of you as a child.
A book in your hand because that’s what you wanted to do at the beach.
Not play, not swim, not smash-run into waves.
You wanted to sit in the shade and read.
Teenage you, spread like a starfish on the trampoline.
Do you notice our crooked smile, how we share a mouth?
Teenage you, Florida you, Grad Nite at Epcot, two feet in two different places.
This is possible at Epcot, that Disney tiny-world, to stand with a border between your legs.
Sun child, hair permanently whisked by wind, you were happy once.
I see it, looking over these photos.
How was I to know you held such a secret?
All I knew was that you smiled for a time, and then you didn’t.
Listen, I have secrets too.
And if you’d stop killing yourself, if you’d get sober, maybe we could sit down.
Maybe I could tell you.
Maybe you’d understand why I made certain decisions, like fighting to keep our family together.
Maybe there are forces neither of us examined.
You used to say, You refuse to talk about anything.
You refuse to show emotion.
I blame myself because I know your whole life, you wanted more out of me.
I thought I needed to be hard enough for both of us.
You were always crumbling.
You were always eroding.
I thought, I need to be force.
I never said, All my life, I’ve been afraid.
I stopped talking to my own mother.
Tell me you want to live, and I’ll be anything you want me to be.
But I can’t will enough life for both of us.
Tell me you want to live.
I was afraid to look back because then I would have seen what was coming.
Every story that knocked into ours.
I was afraid to look back because then I would have seen what was coming.
