Review by New York Times Review
IF IT'S TRUE that - in the long tradition of "Don Quixote" - all novels are about road trips, then perhaps no novels detail the challenges of the journey more than immigrants' tales. The tradition is long and worldwide. The hearts of the down-trodden, the forgotten and neglected, swell with hope at the prospect of starting over somewhere. They collect their courage along with essential belongings and begin the trek to the unforeseen. No matter if the stories they've heard about the new country are exaggerated and acculturation is a frightening hurdle, it will - it must - be better than the present situation. In this spirit, the characters in Cristina Henríquez's new novel, "The Book of Unknown Americans," have come to the United States. The question of how communities of immigrants form is prominent in this tale centered on a young and (what feels early on to be) fatal love. Henríquez sets the story in a single building in a cold city in Delaware, where the constant mention of bleak weather seems to heighten the bleakness of the residents' lives. For over a hundred years Latin Americans, predominantly Mexicans, have been making their way to el Norte to take on whatever hard labor keeps the host country strong. However, we often think of them settling in destinations like Los Angeles or New York. "The Book of Unknown Americans" is less about the actual trek of its characters than about how they settle in, make do and figure things out. They talk to one another, give advice and lend a hand. A neighbor tells the newcomer, Alma, how to shop at the Dollar Tree instead of the more expensive Latino market. Alma, a wife, mother and homemaker, learns to serve canned food and oatmeal instead of the fresh produce and meat to which she was accustomed in Mexico. She wanders into an English as a second language class at a community center and becomes happy at the prospect of learning English to help her brain-damaged daughter, Maribel - the reason Alma and her husband have come to the United States. But she isn't able to attend classes regularly, and English, like other promises of the American dream that emerge and recede, drifts steadily farther from Alma's grasp. Henríquez also introduces a teenager named Mayor, who has fallen in love with Alma's daughter. He is a bit of a disappointment to his father, not becoming a soccer star like his big brother. Yet being accepted by the shy Maribel, who clearly suffers from the accident that affected her brain, makes the young man feel more like a hero than a zero - until their blossoming romance is discovered and contact between them is forbidden. Mayor's family is from Panama. His mother, Celia, is well on her way to assimilation, and she and her husband have become American citizens. On Sundays after church, she serves the newcomers ham sandwiches on white bread with the edges trimmed off. (One assumes she has picked this up from TV rather than from the Ladies' Club downtown.) The wives in the building seem to be traditional, and leave it to their husbands to provide for the family. Even the divorced busybody stays at home, living off her alimony and devoting herself to raising her sons until she can see them through college. Studies tell us that, as the next generations assimilate to the new culture, they sometimes reject their parents' customs altogether. We see this in Mayor's brother when he comes home for Christmas. He finds his parents' apartment, beliefs and even presence depressing. The boys' conversations make us wonder how long it will be before Mayor feels the same - if he doesn't already, as when he refuses his parents' orders to keep away from his beloved. Mayor and Maribel are at the heart of this novel. But Henríquez also devotes space to their neighbors, whose stories illuminate the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration. There is the man who escaped the civil unrest that lasted nearly four decades in Guatemala. There is the Nicaraguan immigrant who was shaken down in a so-called safe house. There is the character who crossed the border with the help of a coyote - unlike Alma and her family, who secured visas so Maribel's father could work near her special-needs school. Regardless of how or why they come, Latino immigrants aren't always made to feel welcome. A character named Micho gives it to us straight: "I came from Mexico," she says, "but there's a lot of people here who, when they hear that, they think I crawled out of hell." Another character - a Puerto Rican who once hoped to become the next Rita Moreno but concedes that "a dream isn't the same thing as a plan" - attributes her failure to the fact that Hollywood already had a token Boricua star. "Americans," she explains, "can handle one person from anywhere." While these stories are unfailingly well written and entertaining, more often than not the first-person accounts don't seem quite authentic. The clean, detailed prose may make it more palatable for Americans with a low tolerance for the exotic, but it forsakes the vibrancy we suspect goes with each portrait. The narrative might have been more persuasive in the omniscient point of view. Frequently, the most significant journeys are internal: "life changers," we call them. And there are life changers for Henríquez's main characters, to be sure. When Maribel finally gives an affirmative response to one of her mother's questions, Alma immediately takes it as a sign that her once-healthy daughter has returned. Yet other accounts are not as uplifting, and there is the tragedy we sense forthcoming from the start. As for the other tenants, a resigned acceptance of their lot comes to replace not just the American dream but maybe most of their dreams. While not what they wished for, life in America is still better than what they left behind. The Puerto Rican finds the low-tax state of Delaware a suitable place to start her own theater; it's not Broadway, but it pays the bills. A Paraguayan who wanted to be a boxer ends up instead as a property manager and, finally, landlord. "If people want to tell me to go home," he says, "I just turn to them and smile politely and say, 'I'm already there.'" Despite the travails that any of us have in these unsure times when traveling or relocating - who among us wouldn't want to be able to say we are home at last? Henríquez's characters illuminate the lives behind current immigration debates. ANA CASTILLO is a poet, essayist and fiction writer. "Give It to Me," her seventh novel for adults, was published in May.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 29, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* On a cold, bewildering night, the Riveras, who have just left their happy lives in Mexico, are dropped off at a dilapidated apartment building on the western edge of Delaware. Arturo has given up his thriving construction company to labor in a dark, grimy indoor mushroom farm, while his wife, Alma, lonely and afraid, with no English and little money, worries incessantly about their beautiful 15-year-old daughter, Maribel. She has suffered a traumatic brain injury, and her parents have sacrificed everything to send her to a special school. Their building turns out to be a sanctuary for Central and Latin American immigrants, and as the Riveras' dramatic tale unfolds, Henriquez brings their generous neighbors forward to tell the compelling stories of why and how they left Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay. As one man says, We are the unknown Americans, those who are feared and hated. As Maribel opens up to Mayor, the infatuated boy next-door who is relentlessly bullied by his father and his classmates, terror of the unknown becomes a tragic force. Each scene, voice, misunderstanding, and alliance is beautifully realized and brimming with feeling in the acclaimed Henriquez's (The World in Half, 2009) compassionately imagined, gently comedic, and profoundly wrenching novel of big dreams and crushing reality, courageous love and unfathomable heartbreak.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Henriquez's latest, Arturo and Alma Rivera move from Patzcuaro, Mexico, to Delaware in hopes of securing a good education for their beautiful teenage daughter, Maribel, who has suffered a traumatic brain injury. Alone, isolated by language and poverty, the Riveras struggle to get by: Arturo works 10 hours a day at a mushroom farm, while Alma worries about predatory men taking advantage of her daughter. In the same apartment building lives Mayor Toro, the misfit son of Panamanian immigrants, who soon falls in love with Maribel. The budding romance, however, threatens to tear their families apart. Meanwhile, Henriquez (The World in Half) gives space to the voices of other immigrants-men and women who have fled their South American and Central American homes to make a better life in a country that, as often as not, refuses to acknowledge their existence. Evoking a profound sense of hope, Henriquez delivers a moving account of those who will do anything to build a future for their children-even if it means confronting the fear and alienation lurking behind the American dream. Agent: Julie Barer, Barer Literary. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Arturo and Alma Rivera have left a comfortable life in Mexico to find help in the United States for their brain-damaged daughter, Maribel. Set in a rundown apartment building in Delaware, this novel focuses on 16-year-old Maribel and Mayor, a Panamanian boy who falls in love with her. Henriquez (Come Together, Fall Apart) weaves accounts of the experiences of their neighbors, also newcomers. Unfortunately, the effect of these interspersed stories is to divert attention from the main narrative, which is well written and compelling. Highlighting the plight of Latin American immigrants and telling a story of young love, the book effectively blends social commentary with warm human interest. The many narrators-Yareli Arizmendi, Christine Avila, Jesse Corti, Gustavo Res, Ozzie Rodriguez, and Gabriel Romero-do a credible job, although the characters would be more believable if they sounded like second language speakers instead of native-born Americans. VERDICT Recommended for listeners interested in an engaging story and in Latin American immigration issues. ["A well-written coming-of-age story set among 'unknown Americans,' ostensibly Hispanic but in many ways any family involved in similar circumstances regardless of ethnicity," read the review of the Knopf hc, LJ 1/14.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A family from Mexico settles in Delaware and strives to repair emotional and physical wounds in Henrquez's dramatic page-turner.The author's third book of fiction (Come Together, Fall Apart, 2006; The World in Half, 2009) opens with the arrival of Arturo and Alma Rivera, who have brought their teenage daughter, Maribel, to the U.S. in the hope of helping her recover from a head injury she sustained in a fall. Their neighbors Rafael and Celia Toro came from Panama years earlier, and their teenage son, Mayor, takes quickly to Maribel. The pair's relationship is prone to gossip and misinterpretation: People think Maribel is dumber than she is and that Mayor is more predatory than he is. In this way, Henrquez suggests, they represent the immigrant experience in miniature. The novel alternates narrators among members of the Rivera and Toro families, as well as other immigrant neighbors, and their stories stress that their individual experiences can't be reduced to types or statistics; the shorter interludes have the realist detail, candor and potency of oral history. Life is a grind for both families: Arturo works at a mushroom farm, Rafael is a short-order cook, and Alma strains to understand the particulars of everyday American life (bus schedules, grocery shopping, Maribel's schooling). But Henrquez emphasizes their positivity in a new country, at least until trouble arrives in the form of a prejudiced local boy. That plot complication shades toward melodrama, giving the closing pages a rush but diminishing what Henrquez is best at: capturing the way immigrant life is often an accrual of small victories in the face of a thousand cuts and how ad hoc support systems form to help new arrivals get by.A smartly observed tale of immigrant life that cannily balances its optimistic tone with straight talk. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.