Phantoms

Phantoms begins with a literal phantom: an olfactory hallucination that Rima follows for years while she writes an intimate memoir of motherhood, memory and mind. The book traces four generations of women: a great-grandmother with a cigar, a flask of rum and a deck of cards; a grandmother of formidable intellect and early death; another, strict and secretive, who raises the author; and, most present and least understood, the strange and estranged mother—luminous, wounding, timid, playful—who becomes an obsession.

Real-life scenes unfold through time: a village scandal, untreated mental illness, a rock festival, an acid trip, a Santería initiation. Rima’s motherhood, writing and language are inseparable from her lineage, her island and the diaspora that pulled her away.

The result is a narrative archaeology of the self that binds the spectral and the material, with a voice that moves between memory and inquiry, grief and humor, rendered with lyrical precision.

The English translation by Jessica Powell preserves voice, meaning and cadence, and includes two new chapters written by the author.