Family or Oblivion / La familia o el olvido

Poetry. Fiction. Hybrid Genre. Translated by Alexandra Lytton Regalado. A "delicate tracery" weaving between poems and short stories, the sixteen pieces that compose FAMILY OR OBLIVION are what Elena Salamanca defines as "filigrees." This "polished and piercing" collection holds multitudes of women: girls, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, saints, brides, and widows--women who starve themselves, who gorge themselves, women who bury or are buried, who cage birds and are the birds themselves, women who are full of forgetfulness, women who are so empty they levitate. These women thread needles, they unravel knots, they knit and embroider these filigrees that speak to us about life in this unnamed city, about memory and oblivion, about the longing and emptiness that hems these characters in. Though Salamanca prefers to leave the threads of her storylines untied, these filigrees, as she explains, "can be read between the lines" and like Teresa, who "continued to float until she reached the ceiling. With no possibility of descending" readers of this book will find that Salamanca's images will also linger in their imaginations for days on end.