Book of Unknown Americans (Henriquez)

The Book of Unknown Americans 
Cristina Henriquez, 2014
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385350846


Summary
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.

Suspenseful, wry and immediate, rich in spirit and humanity, The Book of Unknown Americans is a work of rare force. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—(ca.) 1977-78
• Where—State of Delaware, USA
• Education—B.A., Northwestern University; M.F.A., Iowa
   Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Chicago, Illinois


Born in Delaware, Henriquez spent her childhood summers in Panama with her father's extended family. Her intimate knowledge of that country, with its unique relationship to the U.S., informs most of her work.

She has lived in at least seven states and is now based in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and young daughter. (From the Oxford American, June 8 2009.)

Henriquez is the author of the story collection Come Together, Fall Apart (2006), which was New York Times Editors' Choice selection, as well as the novels <em >The World in Half (2009) and <em >The Unknown Americans (2014). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, AGNI, and The Oxford American, and in various anthologies. (Adapted from the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Mayor and Maribel are at the heart of this novel. But Henriquez also devotes space to their neighbors, whose stories illuminate the lives behind the current debates about Latino immigration.... 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.
Ana Castillo - New York Times Book Review


A novel crowded with characters as vivid as they are resilient—families and neighbors who have bravely chosen hope over fate. The Book of Unknown Americans begins with a vivid vision of promise. [But] Hollywood hopes sink like L.A. smog when....[t]he Riveras come seeking better care for their daughter, Maribel.... [The]collective story is interlaced with tales of dreams deferred from the other tenants, [including] a Puerto Rican dancer who could well be a proxy for anyone from far away with an American-size appetite to dream.
Jennifer Arellano - Elle


A novel as disturbing as it is beautiful: a testament to the mixed blessings our country offers immigrants, who struggle against bigotry and economic hardship while maintaining just enough hope to keep striving for something better. A narrative mosaic that moves toward a heartrending conclusion.
Daniel A. Olivas - Los Angeles Review of Books


Passionate.... Henríquez imagines the sweet—and bitter—reality of coming to America, giv[ing] voice to the unheard stories of people who have quit their native countries for what they hope will be a better life. Alternating points of view bring to life nine families living in an apartment building in Delaware who have fled their birthplaces—dusty towns in Panama, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Paraguay—to begin anew in the States.... Through her characters’ fears, their robust affection for one another, and their resilience, Henriquez illuminates the disparity between the lives they’ve given up and the benefits they’ve gained. For some, the struggle to find new identities as Americans yields rewards; for others, the transition is too difficult, and they return home the way they came: "out of one world and into the next."
Abbe Wright - Oprah Magazine


Henriquez  gives space to the voices of...men and women who have fled their...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.
Publishers Weekly


Spectacular...highly believable and poignant.... A well-written story set among "unknown Americans," ostensibly Hispanic but in many ways any family adjusting to a new culture and way of life, regardless of ethnicity. —Lawrence Olszewski
Library Journal


[T]he Riveras, who have just left their happy lives in Mexico, are dropped off at a dilapidated apartment building [in] Delaware.... Each scene, voice, misunderstanding, and alliance is beautifully realized and brimming with feeling in the acclaimed Henriquez’s compassionately imagined, gently comedic, and profoundly wrenching novel of big dreams and crushing reality, courageous love and unfathomable heartbreak. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


A...page-turner.... That plot complication shades toward melodrama, giving the closing pages a rush but diminishing what Henriquez 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.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How does Alma’s perspective in the novel’s first chapter illustrate her and her family’s hopes for their new life in America? Take another look at her statement after the trip to the gas station: “The three of us started toward the road, doubling back in the direction from which we had come, heading toward home” (11). What are the meanings of “home” here, and how does this scene show how America meets and differs from the Riveras’ expectations of it?

2. Mayor describes how he’s bullied at school and his general feelings of not fitting in. How do you think this draws him to Maribel? What do they have in common that perhaps those around them, including their parents, cannot see on the surface?

3. How is the scene where the Riveras sit down for a dinner of oatmeal a turning point for the family and for the book? Discuss the role of food in the novel, especially how it evokes memories of home and establishes a sense of community. Are there any other cultural values or traditions that do the same thing?

4. What are some key differences in the way that the women in the novel respond to challenges of assimilation compared to the men? How does Alma’s point of view highlight these differences?

5. What brings Alma and Celia together as neighbors and friends, and how does their relationship change by the end of the book?

6. What are some of the signs throughout the novel that Maribel is getting better? Consider the scene in the pizza restaurant in particular, and her response to Alma’s joke. How does laughter here, and in other places in the book, evoke feelings of nostalgia and change?

7. How does Alma’s lingering guilt about Maribel’s accident affect her choices and interactions when she’s in America? Do you think that she still feels this way by the end of the book? What does she have to do, and realize within herself, to move beyond her feelings?

8. Do other characters besides Alma struggle with guilt? How does this emotion echo throughout the book, even among the varying narrators/voices?

9. How would you describe the atmosphere of the impromptu Christmas party in the Toros’ apartment (p. 137)? What brings the residents of the building together, as a group and in more intimate settings? Why do you think Cristina Henríquez brought all the characters together during this particular holiday?

10. Discuss Quisqueya’s role in what happens to Mayor and Maribel. Without her intervention, how might have their relationship, and ultimately the novel, ended differently?

11. How does Garrett cast a threatening shadow over several characters’ thoughts and actions? Did your opinion of him change after you learned about his home environment? How much blame can, or did, you ascribe to him for what happens to Arturo?

12. How does the Toros’ buying a car influence the course of events in the novel? What does the car mean for Rafael and Mayor individually and for their father-son relationship?

13. Was Alma’s decision to return to Mexico with Maribel the best one? Were there alternatives, or did their departure seem inevitable to you?

14. Alma and Mayor are the primary narrators of the book, yet they have very different voices and perspectives. How does pairing these points of view affect the telling of this story, even as they are punctuated by the voices of the neighbors in Redwood Apartments? And how does the chorus of voices affect this main story and pose larger questions of immigration and the Latino experience in the United States?

15. Were you surprised that the book takes place in Newark, Delaware, rather than in the larger Latin American communities of Florida, New York, Texas, or California? What does this setting suggest about immigrant families like the Riveras and the Toros across the country? Do you feel differently about the immigration debate now raging in the United States after reading this book?

16. Do you, the members of your family, or your friends have stories of moving to another country to start a new life? Did any of the stories in the novel resonate with those you know?

17. How does the final chapter, told in Arturo’s voice, influence your understanding of what he felt about America? What do you make of how he ends his narrative, “I loved this country,” and that it is the last line of the book (286)?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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