About the Book
At the heart of this remarkable novel are Arturo and Alma Rivera, who have left their home in Mexico in the hope of getting help for their daughter Maribel, who has been in a terrible accident. They settle in the small town of Newark, Delaware, so she can attend a special school, but are soon frustrated by the difficulties of living in such an unfamiliar place, unable to speak or understand the language, and cut off from the friends and family they have left so far behind.
Soon they learn that their apartment complex is filled with other immigrants like themselves; people from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru. They have come here for different reasons: love, money, political freedom, but they have all faced the challenges - both practical and spiritual - of immigrating to a country where opportunity, as well as discrimination, is part of their daily lives. Ultimately, their different stories come together in a devastating tragedy that befalls the Riveras, but affects the entire building.
The struggles of this small community are brought to life with great imagination and grace. THE BOOK OF UNKNOWN AMERICANS is at once specific and universal, telling the stories of the displaced and unknown, the untold stories of our times.
About the Author :
Cristina Henríquez is the author of the novel The World In Half and the story collection Come Together, Fall Apart, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice selection. Cristina earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She lives in Chicago.
cristinahenriquez.com
Review :
* The Book of Unknown Americans is filled with the fiercest kinds of love - of a boy for a beautiful girl, of stricken parents for an injured daughter, of an immigrant community for an impossible America. In this powerful novel, Cristina Henriquez gives us unforgettable characters, whose destinies are shaped by forces - senseless, random, political - far beyond their control, and yet whose resilience yields a most profound and unexpected kind of beauty -- RUTH OZEKI author of A Tale for the Time Being * Cristina Henriquez's novel is a triumph not just of storytelling, but of American storytelling, a novel whose breadth and power blow open any traditional definition of 'American.' Henriquez pulls us into the lives of her characters with such mastery that we hang onto them just as fiercely as they hang onto 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 * Timely ... It is Maribel and Mayor's star-crossed love that lends this novel an emotional urgency, and it's the story of their families that gives us a visceral sense of the magnetic allure of America, and the gaps so many immigrants find here between expectations and reality ... genuinely moving New York Times * Throughout, the book is lit by sharp observations ... and warmed by Henriquez's obvious affection for her characters -- Sandra Newman Guardian * A quiet, unassuming novel that ravels slowly, quickens without warning, spins into high drama and leaves you in thrall to its vivid characters and its author's sure hand ... a deeply stirring story Washington Post * Henriquez's powerful novel captures readers with the quiet beauty of her characters and their profoundly rendered experiences as immigrants in America. Following nine families who arrived in the States from South and Central America, Henriquez has crafted a novel that is inspiring, tragic, brave, and unforgettable Wall Street Journal * A sweeping and ambitious work, with the point of view shifting among a dozen different characters LA Times, Faces to Watch 2014 * The Chicago writer's highly anticipated novel tells the love story of a Pananamian boy and Mexican girl-the latter of whom suffers a near-fatal accident-and the language, racial and cultural obstacles their families face in America Time Out, Book to Read in 2014 * Wonderful. If most novels, or at least most good ones, are songs, then The Book of Unknown Americans is a choir. In a multiplicity of voices, each one distinct and authentic, Cristina Henriquez tells a whole community of stories, and the book that emerges is warm, wise, and unfailingly generous. It never seems to strive for profundity or grasp at poignancy, and yet page by page, as naturally as can be, it rouses the conscience and touches the heart -- Kevin Brockmeier author of The Brief History of the Dead and The Illumination * Here is an important story about family, community and identity, told with elegance and compassion. The Book of Unknown Americans is unforgettable -- Jami Attenberg author of The Middlesteins * A symphonic love story between these immigrants and an impossible America. Told in a multiplicity of voices, the novel manages that rare balance of being both unflinching and unsentimental. In doing so, it rewrites the definition of what it means to be American The Millions: The Great 2014 Book Preview * Some of the characters in The Book of Unknown Americans were born in the United States, others came as adults or were brought here from Central and South America. Their stories speak to us, involve us in their lives. They dream, meet challenges, and dare to live on hope. Sometimes they cry, but they also laugh, dance, make love. In this beautiful book, Cristina Henriquez introduces us to their vibrant lives, to heartbreaking choices, to the tender beginnings of love, and to the humanity in every individual. Unforgettable -- Esmeralda Santiago author of When I Was Puerto Rican and Conquistadora * Spectacular ... highly believable and poignant Library Journal * Distinctively compassionate and original - a moving portrait of people who often pass before our eyes under a veil of invisibility. Gorgeously woven of both hope and delusion, and of the many kinds of love, this is a novel in which characters' assimilations and aspirations are as much to a new country as to something even broader: to other, finer versions of themselves. As a reader I felt assimilated too, forever altered by the extraordinary world Henriquez creates -- HEIDI JULAVITS * 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 Publisher's Weekly * Ambitious ... Henriquez allows the characters to speak for themselves Chicago Tribune * Engaging, readable and poignant New York Journal of Books * Everyone who comes to the United States brings a complicated story. Arturo and Alma Rivera have emigrated from Mexico to get their brain-injured teenage daughter, Mirabel, the help she needs. As the parents adapt to a new life, they watch warily as a young neighbor befriends Mirabel. Cristina Henriquez's new novel chronicles this budding romance with tenderness, making it seem that young love makes anything possible. The Week
