Sabrina and Corina: Stories

(Paperback)

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A haunting debut story collection on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands, centered on Latinas of indigenous descent that shines a new light on the American West. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST . 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. "Here are stories that blaze like wildfires, with characters who made me laugh and broke my heart."-Sandra Cisneros WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD . FINALIST FOR THE STORY PRIZE . FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION Kali Fajardo-Anstine's magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. 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. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Public Library .Kirkus Reviews.Library Journal "Sabrina & Corinaisn't just good, it's masterful storytelling. Fajardo-Anstine is a fearless writer- her women are strong and scarred witnesses of the violations of their homelands, their culture, their bodies; her plots turn and surprise, unerring and organic in their comprehensiveness; her characters break your heart, but you keep on going because you know you are in the hands of a master. Her stories move through the heart of darkness and illuminate it with the soul of truth."-Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents " A powerhouse debut. . . stylistically superb, with crisp dialogue and unforgettable characters,Sabrina & Corinaintroducesan impressive new talent to American letters."-Rigoberto Gonzalez, NBC News

Reviews

Fierce and essential stories . . . Feminine agency, legacy and kinship . . . govern the hearts of every character in this book.The New York Times

A terrific collection of storiesfiercely and beautifully made.Joy Williams

Here are stories that blaze like wildfires, with characters who made me laugh and broke my heart, believable in everything they said and did. How tragic that American letters hasnt met these women of the West before, women who were here before America was America. And how tragic that these working-class women havent seen themselves in the pages of American lit before. Thank you for honoring their lives, Kali. I welcome them and you.Sandra Cisneros

In the eleven stories ofSabrina & Corina,Fajardo-Anstine writesa love letter to the Chicanas of her homelandwomen as unbreakable as the mountains that run through Colorado and as resilient as the arid deserts that surround it. . . . In herfierce, bold stories, these womenand sheare seen, and heard, and made known; the collection is both a product of pain anda celebrationof survival. . . . Like the woman onSabrina & Corinas cover,the hearts of these characters are exposed but intact. Fajardo-Anstine's heart is there on the page, too,beating with the blood of her ancestors.Bustle

Sabrina & Corinasummons a world we hardly recognize, but should. . . . Fajardo-Anstine can make a story smell of sickness. She can make legend of malediction. Conjuring the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and unfurling the Denver skyline,there is no limit to what Fajardo-Anstine can manifest on paperand, subsequently, in our dreams. Yet, what is most admirable is the courage of her hand. Shes unafraid to delve into areas of race, feminism, queerness, and class. She interrogates whiteness, and its associations like passing and colorism, prodding unapologetically.Electric Literature

[A] beautiful collection. HelloGiggles

[An]engrossing collection of tales . . . Stories that bravely reinvent the Wild West narrative by lifting up Latinx womenand portraying callused hand cowboys not as heroes, but as villains and perpetrators of violence.Latino Book Review

You will clutch your heartreading Kali Fajardo-Anstines short story collection. Her stories are thatheartbreaking, each one like a gift from a small child, offered with earnest, luminous eyes, innocence itself, impossible to reject. . . . Go find yourself a copy of this thrilling, touching, beautiful book.New York Journal of Books

In [Sabrina & Corina] we find a different narrative of the West. These are women who inhabit a space between the Indigenous and the Latinx; they are fierce[and]powerfulin their own way.Brooklyn Rail

Kali Fajardo-Anstine writes about hard truths in womens lives so knowingly, and with such a deft touch, I felt hyper-alert, as well as implicated and imperiled. The book is about belief, coping, yearning, and proceeding in spite of adversity (that is, the times we stay alive). The final act of the first story tells us everything we need to know about what territory well be entering: In these achingly convincing stories, the writer is writing delicately, symbolically, about mortality itself.Ann Beattie

Author Bio

Kali Fajardo-Anstineis theauthor of Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Story Prize,and winner of an American Book Award. Sheis the 2021 recipient of the Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor's Award for Global Impact in the Arts and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Readingthe West Award.She has written for The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, ELLE, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and elsewhere, andhas received fellowships from MacDowell,Yaddo,Hedgebrook, and Tin House.Fajardo-Anstineearned her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. She is the 2022/2023 Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University. She is from Denver, Colorado.