“Cabañuelas will renew interest in Cantú’s previous work as well as earn her a new generation of fans.”—Rigoberto González, NBC News
“As a folklorist, Cantú is fascinated by the hybrid culture that the border creates. Her novels often capture this dynamic world and what it means to grow up there.”—Malgorzata Mical, Smithsonian Folklife
“The pictures of Spain Cantú paints with her words are as rich as the Texas soil of her homeland. . . . Marvelously entertaining and romantic.”—Dr. Manuel Flores, Texana Reads column, Corpus Christi Caller-Times
“It is a feast for the senses, sighing of monarch butterflies flocking south, croquetas de salmon and plato fuerte, Tejano music blaring against the stars. . . . Cabañuelas is an arresting story of individual complexities.”—Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews
“Cantú writes the effortless prose of a travel writer or memoirist reporting contemporary events, a diarist. . . . Cantú controls her art with excellence.”—Michael Sedano, La Bloga
“This book is a brilliant meditation on the traditional fiestas of Spain and the years of La Movida. . . . This novel creates a new blueprint of representation that points at the fluidity of time and space, to a consciousness that refuses borders and the sort of separation that Cantú’s writing is usually addressing.”—Juan Velasco, American Book Review
“We can’t know where Cantú diverges from Nena in Cabañuelas. What we can know, what is lyrically evident in Cantú’s latest novel, is her trust in commonalities and her love for both the people and the landscape of the borderlands.”—Michelle Newby Lancaster, Lone Star Literary Life
“Cantú continues to be [a] major source for understanding life on the border.”—Vernon Schmid, Roundup Magazine
“The borderlands are integral to Nena, to her experiences, and to her writing, and Cabañuelas is a testament to this.”—Ana Roncero-Bellido, Chiricú Journal: Latina/o Literatures, Arts, and Cultures
“Readers will . . . learn much about the human heart along the way.”—Michele Potter, enchantment
“A personal almanac that crosses borders of genres, a testimonio/novela, a compendium of folklore, a collection of snapshots, an unlynching, a rope loosened from the throat of history, a telling, a woman reclaiming a private geography from that multiplicity of geographies—la frontera, from un ‘pedacito de tierra that is home.’”—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
“In Cabañuelas, both author and protagonist are ethnographers, co-weaving a story rich in descriptions of folklore, architecture, landscape, relationships, and academia while telling a transtemporal and transcontinental story of self-affirmation against the historical backdrops and center-stage landscapes of Spain, Mexico, and the United States.”—Larissa M. Mercado-López, coeditor of (Re)mapping the Latina/o Literary Landscape
