“We're the unknown Americans, the ones no one
even wants to know, because they've been told they're supposed to be scared of
us and because maybe if they did take the time to get to know us, they might
realize that we're not that bad, maybe even that we're a lot like them. And who
would they hate then?”
They are from Mexico, Puertorico, Panama, Guatemala, they have no choice but to leave their mother countries and to find a new life in Delaware, USA. They are all hard workers, simple people who just want peace and a decent life. They all left their countries thinking of the USA as the "promised land", the land where everybody can make it. And yet they remain in their little "ghetto", where they just speak spanish and cook Hispanic food and there is a great sense of community. They struggle to find jobs, they have underpaid jobs with zero satisfaction but they don't complain as they have moved for their families and they have hope for a better future.
However, there is a sense of sadness in the novel, a sense of hopeless feeling for the future among the characters that have left me a sense of bitterness at the end I cannot shift.
A very interesting novel, it is fascinating to read how these people live and how they are treated, the differences in cultures. I loved how strong the women are in the novel, never complaining even if they are homesick.
The brief chapters where other immigrants tell their stories distracted me from the main plot and I did not like that very much.
Overall an interesting read, quite sad and bitter.
Overall rating: 6,5 Plot: 7 Writing style: 6,5 Cover: 6,5
Title: The book of unknown Americans
Author: Cristina Henriquez
Publisher: Canongate Books
Pages: 304
Publication year: 2014
Plot:
A boy and a girl who fall in love. Two families whose hopes collide with destiny. An extraordinary novel that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be American.
Arturo and Alma Rivera have lived their whole lives in Mexico. One day, their beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Maribel, sustains a terrible injury, one that casts doubt on whether she'll ever be the same. And so, leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel can get better.
When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panama, sees Maribel in a Dollar Tree store, it is love at first sight. It's also the beginning of a friendship between the Rivera and Toro families, whose web of guilt and love and responsibility is at this novel's core.
Woven into their stories are the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. Their journeys and their voices will inspire you, surprise you, and break your heart.
Arturo and Alma Rivera have lived their whole lives in Mexico. One day, their beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Maribel, sustains a terrible injury, one that casts doubt on whether she'll ever be the same. And so, leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel can get better.
When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panama, sees Maribel in a Dollar Tree store, it is love at first sight. It's also the beginning of a friendship between the Rivera and Toro families, whose web of guilt and love and responsibility is at this novel's core.
Woven into their stories are the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. Their journeys and their voices will inspire you, surprise you, and break your heart.
The Author:
Cristina Henríquez is the author of The Book of Unknown Americans, which was a New York TimesNotable Book of 2014 and one of Amazon’s Top 10 Books of the Year. It was the Daily Beast Novel of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, an NPR Great Read, a Target Book of the Month selection, and was chosen one of the best books of the year by BookPage, Oprah.com, and School Library Journal. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Henriquez is also the author The World In Half (a novel), and Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection.
Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and AGNI along with the anthology This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers.
Cristina’s non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Real Simple, The Oxford American, and Preservation as well as in the anthologies State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Women Writers Reflect on the Candidate and What Her Campaign Meant.
She was featured in Virginia Quarterly Review as one of “Fiction’s New Luminaries,” has been a guest on National Public Radio, and is a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros in honor of her father.
Cristina earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Illinois.
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