Sabrina & Corina

Stories

By: Kali Fajardo-Anstine

Narrated by: full cast

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

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. 

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. 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.

Audiobook Table of Contents:
"Sugar Babies" read by Almarie Guerra
"Sabrina & Corina" read by Roxana Ortega
"Sisters" read by Alma Cuervo
"Remedies" read by Ana Isabel
"Julian Plaza" read by Kyla Garcia
"Galapago" read by Marisol Ramirez
"Cheesman Park" read by Roxana Ortega
"Tomi" read by Kyla Garcia
"Any Further West" read by Marisol Ramirez
"All Her Names" read by Alma Cuervo
"Ghost Sickness" read by Roxana Ortega

Advance praise for Sabrina & Corina

“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 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. I welcome them and you." (Sandra Cisnero)

©2019 Kali Fajardo-Anstine (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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 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. I welcome them and you.” (Sandra Cisneros)

“A terrific collection of stories - fiercely and beautifully made.” (Joy Williams)

“Kali Fajardo-Anstine writes about hard truths in women’s 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 we’ll be entering: In these achingly convincing stories, the writer is writing delicately, symbolically, about mortality itself.” (Ann Beattie)

Absolutely wonderful

This collection of stories is a tremendous literary accomplishment. Truly wonderful writing with layered stories that speak to you beyond the text. The audible performances are top notch and really augment the already wonderful storytelling. Highly recommend this to most anyone looking for something to pull at your insides.

Ying & Yang

Only through light can one see the shadows of struggle that haunt our humanity. I listened to one story each evening. Some were so powerful that they were incorporated into my dreams. Every story shed light on the tragic human experience. Especially the impoverished, marginalized, women and families of Latinas and indigenous peoples.
Perhaps, I am more sensitive to the stories today in 2020 then I might have been in previous years.
The writing is powerful and the readers voices provide an authentic tone.

Gets better as you go

This book had a good story. I enjoyed the reader and the characters. Story picks up towards the end.

Entertaining

I read this class for my Chicana class and honestly couldn’t put it down. The stories are great and some are very relatable.

The stories are well written but left no mark

It was all quite right. But I don't think I'll always remember the stories. Something is missing. Also, besides all being poor, I don't think that being a minority was something of substance. Maybe this is the main takeaway.

Great stories

Some of the stories capture you, others take a bit longer to get into but are still great.

Unfortunately, for those who are looking for happy endings, they may feel incomplete at the end of some of these or just sad, but it is how it sometimes is in life-not all are happy endings.

Utterly depressing

This was one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read. It was well written but I could barely get through it. I kept hoping for something even a tiny bit uplifting but every ending was sadness and despair. I usually look forward to turning my Audible books on but not this one.

wonderful

A beautiful, poignant collection of short stories. I look forward to reading more of Fajardo-Anstine's work.

Stunning

This was a truly magnificent listen! The collection of stories that each stand in their own yet touch one another ever so gently. A window into the world of Latinx and indigenous peoples in the "modern" era through glimpses at regular lives of people just living their lives. she isn't much for endings and leaves the reader yearning for entire novels for each set of characters!!

Just like home!

I'm a white cracker transplant from California and live in Colorado. It was so wonderful to hear the stories from people who lived there long before me.

Really well written and well read short stories

Sweet yet sad, endearing short stories of women's experiences living as Latinas in the American West. A book you can really get lost in, highly recommend and the audio version is beautifully read

Bite sized pieces of fluid emotive connections

Laying the internal lands of origin and inquiry to the external terrain of fables, myths and remedies, these stories depict the tenderness of family units - how single parenting becomes all consuming, how intercultural partners often stray even before there's a path and how the children of these dynamics find their own shapes and meaning, even if distorted by the ones they inherited from societal and geographical structures. My heart hurt and lit and lay open for each character. Beautiful prose to match some intuitive Storytelling.