The Book of Unknown Americans
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
When Alma Rivera arrives in Delaware she is full of the promise and possibilities of her new home. Hope that her daughter Maribel will be helped by the specialist support US education can provide, and faith that her husband Arturo will flourish in a country that celebrates the hard-working. But life without status, money, family and friends soon becomes unmanageable and violent.
Told through a range of perspectives written with compassion and grace, Cristina Henríquez gives voice to the displaced and the unknown, and shows what it means to uproot your life in search of something better.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Henr quez's latest, Arturo and Alma Rivera move from P tzcuaro, 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, Henr quez (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, Henr quez 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.
