Cover art showing a woman with light shining through a crack in her chest
The Cracks We Bear Book Cover Cover image copyright Francisca Álvarez Sánchez

The Cracks We Bear

By Catalina Infante Beovic (tr. Michelle Mirabella)

World Editions, 2025

Shortlisted for the 2026 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award, The Cracks We Bear opens as a story about new motherhood. Soon, however, it reveals itself to be an exploration of memory and trauma as Laura starts to recall her childhood in Chile. Born in exile to staunchly communist parents, she returns to Chile with her mother after the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In the fledgling democracy she grows up in, topics of capitalism and communism are ever present. Laura’s reflections, born from personal experience, are interwoven with raw and honest memories of her family life. Borrowing elements from the Bildungsroman, and pulling from the Latin American short story tradition, Catalina Infante recounts Laura’s past in vignettes. Piece by piece, the short chapters come together like a reconstructed vase, bearing its cracks.