Overview

Longlisted, 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award, Autobiography Growing up in Puerto Rico, Patricia Coral was surrounded by women who fought for their needs amid the demands of domesticity and who were dismissed and judged when they rejected any predetermined paths on an island that itself has never been free. At age twenty-five, she married her first love, a green-eyed musician whose internal storms drove Coral to slowly realize that the marriage must end. Faced with disillusionment-with her husband, with the patriarchal expectations that surrounded her like the Caribbean Sea, and with the limited options available to her-she leaves, only for Hurricane Maria to wrench her heart homeward. Coral evokes the beauty, love, and language of her family and of Puerto Rico as well as the pain of yearning for more. Tastes, colors, and the dreamlike lushness of childhood memories infuse this mournful and propulsive memoir of personal and natural disasters-and the self-discovery made possible only when we choose what to leave behind.

Full Product Details

9780814259252

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Reviews

""With all the garbage talk from 45 about the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, it's imperative to learn the truth about it from the people themselves. This immersive debut memoir is full of robust imagery and lyrical stories of one family of Puerto Rican women."" --Karla J. Strand, Ms. ""Puerto Rican poet Coral's haunting, lyrical memoir will captivate readers drawn to raw, introspective storytelling....With vivid imagery and emotional depth, Coral's narrative becomes a poignant meditation on how family history and place shape identity."" --Roxane Pico-Lenz, Booklist ""Women Surrounded by Water is a memoir-song-ode-manifesto-rosary to the Puerto Rican women of a family with ghosts for men. In the colonial context of the archipelago's countryside, the men look to the national culture for identity and come away broken, while the women look to tradition, love, and religion to escape the guilt of leaving men who must be left. It is a story of betrayals, of oneself and others, and of the hungers of the heart such struggles leave behind. Coral has contained my very history, my heartbreak, along with her own."" --Anjanette Delgado, author of The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho ""Every time I read this memoir, it breaks my heart, yet by the time I finish, my heart feels whole again. These lives and losses leap off the page. Patricia Coral's language is alternately lyrical and lush, bold and unsparing, always with an awareness of history's whetted edge. A stunning debut."" --Sandra Beasley, author of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life ""In Women Surrounded by Water, Patricia Coral takes on the silenced history of Puerto Rican women and what writer Anjannette Delgado calls 'our sexile.' Revisiting the history of her ancestras, Coral tells her story while giving voice to three generations of women's experiences and inviting us into her development as a writer and a Latina woman with a voice that beautifully shapes the fragmented view we have of Puerto Rico."" --Mayra Santos-Febres

"""In Women Surrounded by Water, Patricia Coral takes on the silenced history of Puerto Rican women and what writer Anjannette Delgado calls 'our sexile.' Revisiting the history of her ancestras, Coral tells her story while giving voice to three generations of women's experiences and inviting us into her development as a writer and a Latina woman with a voice that beautifully shapes the fragmented view we have of Puerto Rico."" --Mayra Santos-Febres"

Author Information

Patricia Coralis a bilingual Puerto Rican writer. She holds an MFA in creative writing from American University, where she received the Myra Sklarew Award and where she was Editor in Chief of FOLIO. Coral writes creative nonfiction and poet

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