Martita, I Remember You/Martita, te recuerdo

Written by Sandra Cisneros

Translated by Liliana Valenzuela

 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Bilingual edition

Language ‏ : ‎ English, Spanish

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 128 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593313666

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593313664

 

A long-forgotten letter sets off a charged encounter with the past in this poignant and gorgeously told tale masterfully written by Sandra Cisneros, the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street, in a beautiful dual-language edition.

 

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.

 

Review

 

"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

Poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist and artist, SANDRA CISNEROS is the author of Bad Boys, My Wicked Wicked Ways, Loose Woman, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, The House on Mango Street, Caramelo, Have You Seen Marie?, Vintage Cisneros—a compilation of her works— and Bravo, Bruno. Her most recent books are A House of My Own: Stories from My Life, which is illustrated with photographs, and Puro Amor in a dual-language edition translated by Liliana Valenzuela and featuring illustrations by the author. Born in Chicago in 1954, she is a citizen of both the United States and Mexico. She makes her living by her pen.