Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers
Published by Charco Press, 2022, 216 pages. Original version published in 2018.

“That’s how we were built: out of historical circumstance, a mysterious process that landed us all in this cooking pot…We’re all beset by the same pressure on this island that weeps and dances, and we’re more than skin. Engrossed in the rhythm, I think, we’re like the salt that makes the seas, simmering in the heat of a History as acidic as wound-healing vinegar…In this enormous womb, I know we’re like salt crystals, refractory, luminous, mirrors for each other.”

This week’s pick is, exceptionally, a novel, but one that reads like a combination of a memoir and travelogue. Set in San Andrés, a Caribbean island that is part of Colombia but physically closer to Nicaragua, it is narrated by a woman returning to the place where she was born.

Victoria Baruq grew up on San Andrés, her parents eventually returning to the mainland where they died in a car crash. Victoria has been working in Mexico City for several years. After a break-up with her partner, she decides to move back to her parents’ old home in San Andrés.

We follow Victoria as she makes friends with the locals, and tries to find out more about her ancestors. “The past is important on this island,” she writes. “It’s a constant reference in everyday life.”

The people of San Andrés are a mix of Black, Arab, white, and Colombians from the mainland. The Spanish claimed San Andrés in the 16th century but were driven out by British settlers. Trade brought Arabs to the island, and some stayed.

As Victoria delves deeper into her family’s past, she starts to peel back the layers of the island’s history: from the arrival of the British settlers, slavery, the treaty with Colombia and much more. Victoria’s parents were from mainland Colombia but her maternal grandmother was originally from San Andrés, an islander, a Raizal. As Victoria goes back in time, she discovers that her family had owned slaves, and that her ancestor had married one of his slaves.

While searching the past, Victoria also becomes a part of the island’s present. An old school classmate, Juleen, takes her to a thinkin’ rundown, a sort of bar/restaurant shack for thinking people where they talk about the island’s problems. She takes part in a protest about drinking water.

Cristina Bendek does not gloss over San Andrés’s huge problems. Popularity with tourists has brought excess waste, and hotels have been built with no attention to planning about such essentials as water, already scarce on the island. Because of climate change, storms that used to bypass the island are now hitting it, resulting in floods. The corruption in the local government just makes things worse.

The book draws on both the history and the present-day situation of San Andrés, so in that sense it reads almost like non-fiction. But I kept forgetting that the story of Victoria’s family was fictional: it felt so real, as if these people actually existed. I’m sure some version of them probably did.

The way the book is written—beautifully translated by Robin Myers—gives the reader a real feel for San Andrés and also the way people talk, a mix of Creole, English and Spanish. You get a sense of the different ethnicities living there, and the complicated history that binds them together.

I enjoyed the book and most of all, I learned something about an island I never knew existed.

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.