Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo: A Story in English and Spanish (Paperback)
As a young woman, Corina leaves her Mexican family in Chicago to pursue her dream of becoming a writer in the cafés of Paris. Instead, she spends her brief time in the City of Light running out of money and lining up with other immigrants to call home from a broken pay phone. But the months of befriending panhandling artists in the métro, sleeping on crowded floors, and dancing the tango at underground parties are given a lasting glow by her intense friendships with Martita and Paola. Over the years the three women disperse to three continents, falling out of touch and out of mind—until a rediscovered letter brings Corina’s days in Paris back with breathtaking immediacy.
Martita, I Remember You is a rare bottle from Sandra Cisneros’s own special reserve, preserving the smoke and the sparkle of an exceptional year. Told with intimacy and searing tenderness, this tribute to the life-changing power of youthful friendship is Cisneros at her vintage best, in a beautiful
dual-language edition.
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL
"Genre-defying. . . . it is difficult to think of a more fitting story for today."
–Houston Chronicle
“To read this novella is to stumble upon gems. Cisneros’s prose hums, filled with personification, metaphor, and allusion, crisscrossing from Paris to Chicago to Mexico. Her writing spans languages, continents, and time. . . . Martita, I Remember You is a love letter to female friendship.”
–Los Angeles Review of Books
"The House on Mango Street was THE book of my teenage years. . . . Martita, I Remember You/Martita Te Recuerdo feels like a continuation of that magic."
--Literary Hub
“[Cisneros] is more than a member of the literary pantheon. She’s also part guru, part patron saint of Hispanic literature. . . and a total truth-teller.”
–Texas Monthly
“A story of memory and friendship, but also about the experiences young women endure as immigrants worldwide."
–AP
"[Sandra Cisneros] is an evolving artist who persistently adds substantial titles to her impressive oeuvre of poetry, short stories, essays and memoirs. With Martita, I Remember You Cisneros captures a broad range of influences and important aspects of her life. She grounds the story in a Chicago setting that harkens to her own roots in the city while placing events in a less-than-fanciful Paris she knew as a young traveler. The perspective is both wise and naïve, pragmatic and hopeful. In the story, Cisneros captures the meaning and residual power of a transformative youthful experience. Martita’s narrator, Corina, and Cisneros herself, take the long view to dissect the ways in which our past becomes part of the fabric of our most contemporary selves."
—New City Lit
"Sandra Cisneros’s exquisite jewel of a novella Martita, I Remember You is about aloneness and togetherness, about hopes and separations, about choices, bad and good and indifferent. It’s about youth and memory, about looking into the unknown future and back into the unfathomable past."
—Third Coast Review
"Best-selling Chicana author Sandra Cisneros is back with a brand-new gem. . . . A lovely pick for those who love reading about friendships."
—Reader’s Digest
"Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo is written in English and Spanish, the two versions existing in the same book. The language is poetic. Sandra Cisneros is known for her bestselling novel The House on Mango Street, and while this is a shorter story, the magic and power of her writing is ever present."
—Alma
"The legendary Sandra Cisneros returns with the dual-language novel Martita, I Remember You. The story follows Corina, who, after rediscovering an old letter, finds herself revisiting the heady, heated summer she spent with Martita and Paola in Paris."
—Bustle
"Tightly written, unfolding in a controlled spool of memory, the story is told in a combination of correspondence and narrative vignettes; its length is closer to that of a long short story but it works as a stand-alone volume, especially as paired with its Spanish version. A tale both beautiful and brief."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Every heart-revving scene is sensuously and incisively rendered, cohering into a vivid, tender, funny, bittersweet, and haunting episodic tale of peril, courage, concession, selfhood, and friendship. Cisneros's intricately multidimensional and beautifully enveloping novella is presented in both English and Spanish."
—Booklist (starred review)
"Cisneros’s language and rhythm of her prose reverberate with Corina’s longing for her youth and unfulfilled promise. The author’s fans will treasure this."
—Publishers Weekly
THE SANTA FE LITERARY FESTIVAL
Celebrating the power of story, the inaugural Santa Fe Literary Festival will be an unforgettable weekend dedicated to a shared love and language of ideas. Collected Works Bookstore is thrilled to be the official bookstore of the Festival.
Bestselling, prizewinning authors and literary legends like Margaret Atwood, Joy Harjo, Colson Whitehead, Sandra Cisneros, John Grisham, amongst others, will headline the festival, discussing their work with readings and book signings that set the stage for further inspired conversations.
NOTE: If you purchase a festival event ticket that is INCLUSIVE of the author's book, you will receive that book upon check-in for your event at the festival.
To order books by festival authors directly from CW, see below. Collected Works will be carrying a wide selection of books by all participating authors available for online pre-order and at the on-site festival bookstore May 20-23.
Purchase your tickets from the SF Literary Festival website here.
Purchase your books by festival authors directly from CW below:
Margaret Atwood Freddie Bitsoie Sandra Cisneros
Lynn Cline William deBuys Ashley Ford
John Grisham Roshi Joan Halifax Joy Harjo
Anne Hillerman Cheryl Alters Jamison Craig Johnson
Asma Khan Phil Klay Jon Krakauer
Valeria Luiselli Deborah Madison Emily St. John Mandel
George R. R. Martin James McGrath Morris Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich of Honey & Co.
Carmella Padilla Douglas Preston Kirstin Valdez Quade
Bob Shacochis Henry Shukman Hampton Sides