Don’t Come Back

by Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas

In this collection of linked lyrical and narrative essays, experimental translations, and reinterpreted myths, Lina Maria Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas launches into an exploration of home and identity, family history and belonging, continually examining what it means to feel familiarity but never really feel at home.
 
Don’t Come Back  intermixes translations of Spanish adages and adaptations of major Colombian myths with personal essays about growing up amidst violence, magic, and an unyielding Andean sun. Home is place and time and people and language and history, and none of these are ever set in stone. Attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable and translate the untranslatable—to move smoothly and cohesively between culture, language, and place—Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas is torn between spaces, between the aunt who begs her to return to Colombia and the mother who tells her, “There’s nothing here for you, Lina. Don’t come back.”  Don’t Come Back  is an exploration of home and identity that constantly asks, “If you really could go back, would you?”
 

Genres: Essays, Memoir, Nonfiction

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Cookielover · Rating 3 out of 5]

thank you for your sadness, i guess

[Meghan Coley · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have no doubt this writing is great, but there were just too many things going on in each piece.

[Lilinaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Beautifully written. Some of the essays/chapters will stay with me for a very long time.

[Lesli Mortensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most creative and artfully made collection of essays I have ever read.

[Emma McCoy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reporting live from the end of this book: I did it. Favorite essay: "The First Jamie." Didn't love the rest of them, mostly because it was difficult to follow.

[Jessie Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

was glad to be along for the ride, although at times i was unsure where we were going, i was content to sit back and enjoy the trip.

[Jose Orduna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas is one of the best essayists writing today.

[Abigail Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t know how to explain this: this book felt genre-less

[Katherine Whitworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredibly well-written collection of lyrical essays. Some parts were hard to get through bc of the dense or graphic content, but overall it was worth the read and I feel like I learned a lot from both Lina’s writing style and her experiences. My favorite pieces were BOG-MIA-CID, After the Colonel, and The First Jaime.

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have DNF'd this many months ago, but forgot to. Cabeza-Vanegas is certainly a talented author, but I couldn't get super far into this book because there was a sort of....conceptual density that I can't quiet place. Some of the essays were more direct and really speared me, others were harder to grasp from both a structural and a conceptual standpoint and those couldn't keep me engaged. I hope one day to have the bandwidth to pick it up again.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best essay collections I've read in a very long time. It's beautifully designed, too.

[Mckay · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Don’t Come Back” is not a cheery read, by any stretch of the imagination. In this expansive collection of creative non-fiction essays, Ferreira examines her experiences as a Colombian native and American immigrant with brutal honesty and holds nothing back. She recounts violence, death, family issues, and many other dark topics through a lens of sly cynicism. One thing I really appreciated about each essay is how carefully crafted each of the narratives are. Oftentimes, Ferreira will switch between several different time periods, places, and people in the same essay, but she always manages to connect them back into a common theme by the end. It gives the reader this sort of whiplash when jumping between subjects so quickly, but it never becomes unpleasant to do so. I very much appreciated how these essays became so interconnected with each other. It was almost as if I, as the reader, was becoming entangled with Ferreira’s life in this spiderweb of tales, and I was always excited to see recurring themes and characters. It made the heartbreaking things that Ferreira went through so much more real to know that these events were not just surface level poetry-they were very deeply rooted in the roadmap of her life. I first heard Ferreira during a reading at my university, and she mentioned that she (and I’m paraphrasing here) “never writes about anything unless it’s urgent.” In reading “Don’t Come Back,” it’s outstanding to me and abundantly clear that Ferreira’s life is extremely urgent. Highly recommend.

[Josiah Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

*deep incredibly heavy sigh*

Ya know this was maybe kind of objectively really good. But holy shit I really didn’t know wtf was going on in some of these essays. Some?? Some were effing goddamn brilliant!! Amazing!! Inspiring!! And then?? And then… yeah, well, there were others suffering from a terrible bout of main character syndrome and “look at me and all the vocab I know.”
I don’t care how well you can craft a sentence just make the story make sense and make me feel like it’s important for me to know?? Idk. Maybe this just went over my head.

2.5 stars

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ingeniously crafted essays explore the universality of humanity and the undying love of family. ❤

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew I would like this book at the first line, “the hamsters were dead”. However, I know I cannot cover every specific line, every detail that I really loved about this book, so I will speak generally. Don’t Come Back is a wonderful book of non-fiction essays that are separate but equal in that each section is independent with itself while at the same time, continuing with themes and Lina’s distinctive voice throughout the entire book. This is a book about life, love, family, faith, and our perceptions of truth. It asks the reader the question, “what do you believe is true?” while also saying, “here is my truth for you to borrow for a little while”.

My absolute favorite part of Don’t Come Back is the mix of reality with fiction. When one thinks of “nonfiction”, there is often an immediate assumption that everything within those pages will be true, or at least close to it. However, Lina mixes sections about personal events or things from her past with stories from mythology. I love the idea of fiction being such a large part of any narrative, especially personal narratives. Lina’s creativity showcased, for me, the things that really make up a life. It’s not all just facts and figures but stories and fantasy as well.

Before I finish up here, I just want to make sure I mention that Don’t Come Back pulled an actual, real, response from me, which doesn’t happen very often. I’ve read so many things in my years that when I emotionally (or intellectually for that matter) respond to a book, it’s practically a miracle (“it’s alive!!!”). When I read this book, I laughed, and I literally gasped out loud at some points. I hmmed, I hawed, I generally made mildly annoying sounds.
Don’t Come Back will stay with me. And not just because it’s downloaded on my Kindle app.