But their time apart and their independent struggles help them both reach a place of greater confidence in and compassion for themselves and each other.Īs Luz matures, she must maneuver dating, work, and family life, complicated by her increasing awareness of the dangerous degree of discrimination present in the country. His presence was essential for the financial well-being of the household, but Diego was also a guiding, older male presence for Luz, making me wonder if he hadn’t left, and Luz would have been able to ask him for advice and the household wouldn’t have struggled as much, maybe she wouldn’t have experienced such extensive emotional turmoil. Diego is a womanizer who must leave town after a damning (and to young Luz, unknowable) incident gets him brutally attacked by a group of young Anglo men. Luz and her snake-charming brother Diego live in a one-bedroom apartment with their tenacious aunt Maria Josie and Diego’s snakes Reina and Corporal. In Woman of Light, Luz Lopez comes of age in early 1930s Denver, Colorado.
It has many of the same elements and themes that distinguished her voice in Sabrina and Corina: powerful familial relationships, striking Southwestern landscapes, and unflinching and effective inclusion of difficult topics like addiction, death, and poverty, all exhibited through multiple generations of mixed Chicana women forging their place in the world while running up against ever-present discrimination in America. The book still glows in my memory as one of my favorites, for sentimental and literary reasons alike, so I was especially excited to read Fajardo-Anstine's new novel, Woman of Light. And somehow the end of every story elicited even the smallest smile, so by the end of the book, I have forgiven Kali Fajardo-Anstine eleven times for the painful yet promising lives I have lived through Sabrina and Corina. Vivid voices and poetic descriptions snared me into stories about murder, about loss of innocence, about loneliness, about fear.
I read through the book quickly, and afterwards the striking stories of sisters, nieces, mothers, and grandmothers still echoed in my mind. One of the first books I ever read and reviewed at Porchlight was Sabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and it was also one of the easiest reviews I’ve ever written. Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, One World
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