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The book of unknown Americans
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2014
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Mayor We heard they were from México. "Definitely," my mom said, staring at them through our front window as they moved in. "Look at how short they are." She let the curtain fall back in place and walked to the kitchen, wiping her hands on the dish towel slung over her shoulder. I looked, but all I saw was three people moving through the dark, carrying stuff from a pickup truck to unit 2D. They cut across the headlights of the truck a few times, and I made out their faces, but only long enough to see a mom, a dad, and a girl about my age. "So?" my dad asked when I joined him and my mom at the dinner table. "I couldn't really see anything," I said. "Do they have a car?" I shook my head. "The truck's just dropping them off, I think." My dad sawed off a piece of chicken and stuffed it in his mouth. "Do they have a lot of things?" he asked. "It didn't seem like it." "Good," my dad said. "Maybe they are like us, then." We heard from Quisqueya Solís that their last name was Rivera. "And they're legal," she reported to my mom over coffee one afternoon. "All of them have visas." "How do you know?" my mom asked. "That's what Nelia told me. She heard it from Fito. Apparently the mushroom farm is sponsoring them." "Of course," my mom said. I was in the living room, eavesdropping, even though I was supposed to be doing my geometry homework. "Well," my mom went on, clearing her throat, "it will be nice to have another family in the building. They'll be a good addition." Quisqueya took a quick look at me before turning back to my mom and hunching over her coffee mug. "Except . . . ," she said. My mom leaned forward. "What?" Quisqueya said, "The girl . . ." She looked at me again. My mom peered over Quisqueya's shoulder. "Mayor, are you listening to us?" I tried to act surprised. "Huh? Me?" My mom knew me too well, though. She shook her head at Quisqueya to signal that whatever Quisqueya was going to say, she'd better save it if she didn't want me to hear it. "Bueno, we don't need to talk about it, then," Quisqueya said. "You'll see for yourself eventually, I'm sure." My mom narrowed her eyes, but instead of pressing, she sat back in her chair and said loudly, "Well." And then, "More coffee?" We heard a lot of things, but who knew how much of it was true? It didn't take long before the details about the Riversa began to seem far- fetched. They had tried to come into the United States once before but had been turned back. They were only staying for a few weeks. They were working undercover for the Department of Homeland Security. They were personal friends with the governor. They were running a safe house for illegals. They had connections to a Mexican narco ring. They were loaded. They were poor. They were traveling with the circus. I tuned it all out after a while. School had started two weeks earlier, and even though I had told myself that this would be the year the other kids stopped picking on me, the year that I actually fi t in for once in my life, things already weren't going exactly as planned. During the first week of school, I was in the locker room, changing into my gym shorts, when Julius Olsen tucked his hands into his armpits and started flapping his arms like wings. "Bwwaak!" he said, looking at me. I ignored him and cinched the drawstring on my shorts. Actually, they were my older brother Enrique's shorts that had been handed down to me, but I wore them because I thought that maybe they would make me seem cooler than I was, like maybe some of Enrique's popularity was trapped in the fibers and would rub off on me. He'd been a senior the year before, when I was a freshman, and every single person in the school had adored him. Soccer stud. Girlfriends by the dozen. Homecoming king. So opposite of me that when I tried to earn points with Shandie Lewis, who I would have given just about anything to hook up with, by telling her that I was Enrique Toro's brother, she said that was a really stupid thing to lie about. "Bwwaaaak!" Julius said louder, jutting his neck toward me. I balled up my jeans and shoved them into my locker. Garrett Miller, who had basically made picking on me last year his special project, pointed at me, laughed, and said, "Fucking chicken legs." He flung his boot at my chest. Julius snorted. I took a deep breath and shut my locker. I was used to this kind of abuse. Last year, whenever Enrique caught wind of it, he'd tell me to stand up for myself. "I know you don't want to fight," he said once. "But at least have the balls to tell them to fuck off." And in my head I did. In my head, I was Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer or James Bond or all three of them combined. But beyond my head, the most I ever did was ignore it and walk away. "How do you say 'chicken' in Spanish?" Garrett asked. "Pollo," someone answered. "Major Pollo," Garrett said. The kids at my school loved changing my first name to English and then tacking insults onto it. Major Pan (short for Panamanian). Major Pan in the Ass. Major Cocksucker. Julius started cracking up, and he squawked at me again. A few of the other guys in the locker room snickered. I started walking-- I just wanted to get out of there-- but when I did, I bumped Garrett's boot, which was on the floor in front of me. "Don't touch my shoe, Pollo," Garrett said. "Kick it over here," Julius said. "Fuck you," Garrett snapped. "Don't tell him to kick my shoe." "Don't worry," Julius said. "He can't kick for shit. Haven't you seen him out there after school trying to play soccer? He's a total fuckup." "Major fuckup," Garrett said, stepping in front of me to block any hope I had of leaving. Garrett was thin, but he was tall. He wore a green army coat every single day, no matter what the weather was, and had a tattoo of an eagle on his neck. The year before, he'd spent a few months in juvenile detention at Ferris because he beat up Angelo Puente so bad that by the end of it, Angelo had two broken arms and blood pouring out of his nose. There was no way I was going to mess with him. But when the bell rang and the other kids started fi ling out into the gym, Garrett still didn't budge. The locker room was in the school basement and it was so quiet right then that I could hear water coursing through the pipes. There wasn't anywhere for me to go. Garrett took a step closer. I didn't know what he was going to do. And then Mr. Samuels, the gym teacher, poked his head into the room. "You boys are supposed to be out in the gym," he said. Garrett didn't move. Neither did I. "Now!" he barked. So that was one thing. The other thing, as Julius had pointed out, was soccer. The only reason I'd gone out for the team in the first place was because my dad had forced me into it. For him, the logic went something like: I was Latino and male and not a cripple, therefore I should play soccer. Soccer was for Latinos, basketball for blacks, and the whites could keep their tennis and golf as far as he was concerned. He'd applied the same reasoning to my brother, too, except that in Enrique's case, it had actually worked out. Enrique had been the fi rst player in the history of our school to make varsity as a freshman, and when he got a full- ride soccer scholarship to Maryland, it was like my dad had been vindicated. "See?" he'd said, waving around the offer letter when it came in the mail. "You were meant to do this! The next Pelé! And this one," he'd said, pointing at me, "the next Maradona!" Enrique might have been the next Pelé, but I wasn't even in the same galaxy as Maradona. Two weeks into practice, I had bruised shins, a scabby knee, and a scraped elbow. Coach even pulled me aside once to ask whether I was wearing the right size cleats. I told him they were size seven, which was my size, and he patted my shoulder and said, "Okay, then. Maybe you should just sit it out for a while," and directed me to the sidelines. In the past few days, a flock of girls had started coming to our practices, sitting in the empty stands and pointing at us while they texted and talked. Word got around that they were new freshmen. They didn't look like any freshmen I knew, in their skimpy tank tops and lacy black bras they wore underneath, but what I did know was that our team got a hell of a lot better after those girls showed up. Everyone was running faster and kicking harder than before. I felt like a loser, hanging around the sidelines all the time. Whenever the girls broke out in laughter, I was sure they were laughing at me. One day, I asked Coach if I could go back in, even if just for a few drills. When he looked ambivalent, I lied and said, "I've been practicing with my dad at home. Even he thinks I'm getting better." Coach worked his jaw from side to side like he was thinking about it. "Please?" I said. Finally he gave in. "Okay. Let's see what you got." We set up a star drill where guys spread out into a circle and dribbled the ball a few paces into the middle before passing to a teammate who took the ball and repeated the sequence. Each time I ran through and got back in line, I looked up at the girls in the stands, who weren't laughing anymore, just watching. Maybe I got overconfident. Maybe there was a divot in the grass. The next time I ran into the middle to get the ball, my ankle turned. Ethan Weisberg was stepping toward me, waiting for me to pass to him. I was so eager to get the dribble going again that when I went for the ball with my other foot, I rolled my cleat up over it instead. The ball was still spinning, and I stumbled again just as Ethan, impatient and frustrated, finally came at me and tried to spear his foot in to swipe the ball out for himself. When he did, I fell. His leg caught under mine. And before either of us knew it, I had taken him down, both of us landing on top of each other in the middle of the field. "What the fuck, Mayor!" Ethan yelled. My hip throbbed. Coach blew his whistle and jogged in to untangle us. The girls erupted in laughter. Excerpted from The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Fiction/Biography Profile
Characters
Alma Rivera (Female),
Arturo Rivera (),
Genre
Young adult
Fiction
Romance
Topics
Family
Destiny
Guilt
Love
Friendship
Dreams
Teenagers
Immigrants
Setting
Delaware - Mid-Atlantic States (U.S.)
Time Period
2000s -- 21st century
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Trade Reviews
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.
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.
Publishers 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.
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
Kirkus 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.
Summary
"A triumph of storytelling. Henríquez pulls us into the lives of her characters with such mastery that we hang on to them just as fiercely as they hang on to one another and their dreams. This passionate, powerful novel will stay with you long after you've turned the final page." --Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
 
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 and originality.
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