Review: “The Book of Unknown Americans”
By hola | Published | No Comments
Cristina Henriquez’s novel, “The Book of Unknown Americans,” captures the immigrant perspective through the lives of several Latinos who live in the same apartment complex.
Every character shares a “coming to America” story—both the positive and negative experiences of love, racism, economics, and family, along with powerful emotions of guilt and loyalty, friendship, sacrifice, and hope.
Though the book unfolds in a series of first-person narratives, many of the lives cross the paths of Mayor and Maribel, a couple of teenagers in love. This first person narration is tough to follow, at times. But the strategically arranged chapters eventually make sense as necessary to the plot’s development.
The book’s title is ironic reference to the often-alienating experience of being an immigrant. By sharing their stories, these “Unknown Americans” become “known.”
Henriquez told Daniel Olivas in an interview published in the Los Angeles Review of Books that she wanted to not only acknowledge the existence of the immigrants but to celebrate their voices.
“Hurrah for ordinary stories!” she said. “I felt very strongly that each of the characters—immigrants who, in our current national culture, are often denied a voice—should have a chance to speak. First-person point of view seemed the best way to accomplish that. I never considered anything else.”
Though the voices were fictional, the stories were real—or at least, similar to the journey of many Latin American immigrants. American-born citizens may fail to see the hardships immigrants endure because they have not heard their voices. This novel allows us to hear, see, empathize, and learn from immigrants.
In the collective, the individual narratives pieced together a love story between Mayor, a Panamanian boy, and Maribel, a Mexican girl, a couple of teenagers living in the same apartment complex. They are both outcasts for very different reasons. Beyond that, however, they seemed to have nothing in common. Nevertheless, they begin a slow yet remarkable love story that gradually intertwines everyone else and unites the entire apartment complex despite stark differences in family structures, immigration status, and levels of “Americanization.” With each character’s personal story, readers gather bits and pieces of the love story at the heart of the novel.
Henriquez aimed to write a relatable tale. Much like one of the main characters, Mayor, she found herself dealing with similar hardships of feeling like an outcast. In his story, readers often see Mayor being bullied by bigger, more athletic youths. Sometimes, he’s denigrated as a “pan” which is a racial slur for Panamanians. Henriquez told Olivas that she was once the target of similar jokes.
Henriquez uses her father as inspiration for the novel. He emigrated to here from Panama in the 1970s to attend university. He went to college and gained citizenships—nice and simple, unlike many of the stories in the novel.
“We all have stories to tell,” she said in the interview with Olivas. “They might seem ordinary to us, but one of the things fiction does well is to take even the most ordinary story and elevate it into something extraordinary. That’s the hope at least. It can force us to slow down long enough to consider beings other than ourselves.”
“The Book of Unknown Americans” uses fiction to humanize immigrants for readers who might otherwise lose themselves in debates and theories about immigration policies.
As one characters in the novel points out: “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?”
“The Book of Unknown Americans,” by Cristina Henriquez. Knopf (June 3, 2014)
—Bria Baylor
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