Dressing the Saints - (Immigrant Writers) by Black Lawrence Press & Aracelis González Asendorf (Paperback)

About the Book

Dressing the Saints, the second selection for the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series, vividly explores the lives of Cuban Americans. Set in the lushness of Cuba and Florida, and spanning decades, the stories chronicle lives left behind and new ones forged with struggle, melancholy, and hope. Old loves are reencountered, enemies confronted, family secrets are revealed, and women fight for agency. Memory, what can't be forgotten and what is elusively fading away with the passage of time, is ever-present in the stories of people fiercely confronting fate with grace and compassion.

Book Synopsis

Dressing the Saints, the second selection for the Black Lawrence Press Immigrant Writers Series, vividly explores the lives of Cuban Americans. Set in the lushness of Cuba and Florida, and spanning decades, the stories chronicle lives left behind and new ones forged with struggle, melancholy, and hope. Old loves are reencountered, enemies confronted, family secrets are revealed, and women fight for agency. Memory, what can't be forgotten and what is elusively fading away with the passage of time, is ever-present in the stories of people fiercely confronting fate with grace and compassion. "Dressing the Saints is a beautiful collection of short stories that captures the losses, family allegiances, and ruptures of Cuban exile. Haunted by the past, richly detailed, and with a strong sense of place, each piece is a quiet portrait of dislocation, of the need to tell stories in order to survive." -- Cristina Garcia, author of Vanishing Maps

Review Quotes

"Wryly observed and suffused with tenderness, the neatly plotted stories in Aracelis González Asendorf's debut collection DRESSING THE SAINTS inscribe a new and moving chapter of the Cuban diaspora into Florida's literary history with delicacy, nuance, and wit."
--Joy Castro, author of One Brilliant Flame

"An unforgettable collection about home, endurance, and the search for understanding amid often devastating losses. I fell in love with these characters as they tried to connect with one another, sometimes tenderly, sometimes awkwardly, and sometimes proudly displaying well-earned fangs. A gorgeous, lyrical debut!"
--Ana Menéndez, author of The Apartment

About the Author

Aracelis González Asendorf was born in Cuba. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Brevity Magazine, Kweli Journal, Aster(ix) Journal, The Adirondack Review, Puerto del Sol, The Acentos Review, Litro, The South Atlantic Review, Saw Palm, Black Fox Literary Magazine, The Hong Kong Review, The Santa Fe Literary Review and elsewhere. Her stories have been anthologized in All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 100% Pure Florida Fictionv(University Press of Florida, 2000), and Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness (University of Florida Press, 2021). She is the recipient of the 2016 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Graduate Creative Writing Award for Prose, a 2019 Sterling Watson fellow, and 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize finalist.