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 Cisneros “Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s collection of stories, Sabrina & Corina, isn’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. Comparisons came to mind: the Alice Munro of the high plains, the Toni Morrison of indigenous Latinas—but why compare her to anybody? She is her own unique voice, and her work will easily find a place, not just in Latinx literature but in American literature and beyond.”—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
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"In the eleven stories of Sabrina & Corina, Fajardo-Anstine writes a love letter to the Chicanas of her homeland—women as unbreakable as the mountains that run through Colorado and as resilient as the arid deserts that surround it. . . . In her fierce, bold stories, these women—and she—are seen, and heard, and made known; the collection is both a product of pain and a celebration of survival. . . . Like the woman on Sabrina & Corina’s 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
“A collection read by multiple narrators with both skill and sensitivity…an incredible performance…This is an essential listen.”
— Elle (audio review)“This audiobook collection sparkles with wit and wisdom…In the title story, narrator Roxana Ortega vividly portrays various female characters, mainly Mexican–Americans. Marisol Ramirez, does excellent work in ‘Any Further West,’ her intonation beautifully capturing the thirteen-year-old narrator. Kyla Garcia’s delivery of ‘Remedies’ features a fine rendering of an elderly woman who dispenses herbs and advice…Fajardo–Anstine writes with grace and authenticity, and the narrators provide a wealth of fine readings. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFileFierce and essential stories . . . Feminine agency, legacy and kinship . . . govern the hearts of every character in this book.
— The New York TimesA terrific collection of stories—fiercely and beautifully made.
— Joy WilliamsHere 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 CisnerosSabrina & Corina summons 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 paper and, subsequently, in our dreams. Yet, what is most admirable is the courage of her hand. She’s 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 women and portraying callused hand cowboys not as heroes, but as villains and perpetrators of violence.
— Latino Book ReviewYou will clutch your heart reading Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s short story collection. Her stories are that heartbreaking, 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 BooksIn [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] powerful in their own way.
— Brooklyn RailKali 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 BeattieBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Kali Fajardo-Anstin is the author of Sabrina & Corina, winner of the American Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and The Story Prize. She is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor’s Global Impact Award for Excellence in Arts & Culture and the Reading the West Book Award for Fiction. She has written for the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA degree and is the 2022–2023 Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Erin Bennett is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a stage actress who played Carlie Roberts in the BBC radio drama Torchwood: Submission. She can be heard on several video games. Regional theater appearances include the Intiman, Pasadena Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, A Noise Within, Laguna Playhouse, and the Getty Villa. She trained at Boston University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Almarie Guerra is an actor known for her work on Sorry You’re Sad, Dude Bro Party Massacre III, and Night of the Living Deb. She is part of an LA/NY based improv group, the Story Pirates.
Roxana Ortega is a narrator, actress, and comedian based in Los Angeles. She studied at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and first began performing in the Bay Area. She has appeared in supporting roles in numerous films, including Evan Almighty and Miss Congeniality 2. Her television credits include Samantha Who, The Shield, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crossing Jordan, and Journeyman.
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.