The Book of Unknown Americans

The Book of Unknown Americans is about immigrants. Specifically, immigrants from Latin America. It focuses on the intertwining stories of two families: the Riveras from Mexico (narrated by mother, Alma) and the Toros from Paraguay (narrated by youngest son, Mayor). The two families live in the same apartment complex in Delaware, and the life stories of the other residents are sprinkled through the main narrative.

I enjoyed the main narrative, though I found the side stories to be distracting and a bit simplistic. They were told in a way that seemed to give the people telling them more self-awareness than they exhibited in any other part of the story. It seemed a bit too concerned with explaining motivations, rather than letting the reader infer them from the histories themselves.

I also got distracted by the less than linear timeline. The two main overlapping viewpoints occasionally got ahead of one another, requiring the other one to back up and fill in the blanks. It was confusing until I realized what was happening, and then it sort of started working.

Ultimately the book did start to come together in the end, and I understood why the author structured it as she did. But it was clumsy while I was reading it, which distracted from the very sweet story at the center of anything. I don't think this was a wholly successful book, but it was worth reading, and I did cry at the end. I probably would have liked it much more had I encountered it in high school.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more