Synopses & Reviews
A debut novel of female friendship and coming-of-age from Jazmina Barrera, acclaimed author of Linea Nigra and On Lighthouses, translated by Christina MacSweeney.
It was meant to be the trip of a lifetime. Mila, Citali, and Dalia, childhood friends now college aged, leave Mexico City for the England of The Clash and the Paris of Courbet. They anticipate the caf s and crushes, but not the early signs that they are each steadily, inevitably changing.
That feels like forever ago. Mila, now a writer and a new mother, has just published a book on needlecraft — an art form so long dismissed as "women's work." But after learning Citali has drowned, Mila begins to sift through her old scrapbooks, reflecting on their shared youth for the first time as a new wife and mother. What has come of all the nights the three friends spent embroidering together in silence? Did she miss the signs that Citali needed help? Jazmina Barrera's
Cross-Stitch, in Christina MacSweeney's taut translation, encounters its characters hesitating before the specter of adulthood.
Review
"Jazmina Barrera has written an astonishing book, one that illuminates the mysterious, intricate, and eternal nature of female friendship. Through prose that never fails to find the profound in the particular, Barrera's Cross-Stitch takes readers on a journey through the little private universes people make through relation to one another." — Chloé Cooper Jones, author of Easy Beauty
Review
"The multi-talented Barrera, author of the memoir Linea Nigra (2022), turns to fiction in this introspective translation from the original Spanish... Lovers of language and subtle character development will be enthralled." — Booklist
Review
"Reflections on youth, the passage of time, and the meaning of female friendship....[Jazmina Barrera] blend[s] Sally Rooney-esque interpersonal chaos with a clean, graceful prose style." — Vogue
About the Author
Jazmina Barrera was born in Mexico City in 1988. She has published work in various print and digital media, such as The Paris Review, El Malpensante, Words Without Borders, El País, The New York Times and Electric Literature. She has a Master's Degree in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University, which she completed with the support of a Fulbright grant. She is the author of four books in Spanish: Cuerpo extraño, Cuaderno de faros, Linea nigra and the children's book, Los nombres de los animales and Punto de cruz. Her books have been published in nine countries and translated to English, Dutch, Portuguese Italian and French. Her book of essays Cuerpo extraño (Foreign Body) was awarded the Latin American Voices prize by Literal Publishing in 2013. Cuaderno de faros was long listed for the von Rezzori award. The English version of Cuaderno de faros, On Lighthouses, (Two Lines Press, 2020) was chosen for the Indie Next list by Indie Bound. Linea Nigra was a finalist for the National Book Critics Cricle's Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize, CANIEM's Book of the Year Award, and the Amazon Primera Novela (First Novel) Award. She is editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope. She lives in Mexico City. Author photo by Rodrigo Jardón.
Christina MacSweeney has an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia. Her work has been recognized in a number of important awards. Her translation of Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize and also shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award (2017). Her most recent translations include fiction and nonfiction works by Daniel Saldaña París, Elvira Navarro, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Julián Herbert, Jazmina Barrera, and Karla Suárez. She has also contributed to anthologies of Latin American literature and published translations, articles and interviews on a variety of platforms.