We’re so happy to announce that the Read Contra Costa 2024 pick is The Things We Didn’t Know by Elba Iris Pérez.
Pérez's rich English-language debut novel chronicles a girl's 1960s upbringing in an isolated Massachusetts suburb with her strict Puerto Rican parents: Luis, a factory worker, and Raquel, a housewife who feels homesick and trapped. When Andrea Rodriguez is almost nine and her brother seven, their mother kidnaps them and takes them to Puerto Rico, where she abandons them with an aunt they've never met.
Almost a year later, Luis retrieves them. As a teen back in Massachusetts, Andrea's forced to stay after school with an abusive aunt who guards her chastity. Pérez viscerally portrays the children's longing for their mother, which makes their resilience all the more affecting as Andrea draws on the example of Machi and others to break out of a cloistered life like her mother's and make her own path.
Pérez’s debut novel based largely on her own life is a diverse tapestry of coming of age during the Vietnam war and surviving life feeling torn between two cultures and two homes.
We meet Andrea during the height of the wave of Puerto Ricans migrating to the mainland. According to the Library of Congress, by the end of World War II, there were 13,000 Puerto Ricans in New York City. By 1955, it was nearly 700,000. By the sixties, it was over a million. We can see this happening to Andrea, even in the small Massachusetts factory town of Woronoco. At first, she and brother are the only Puerto Rican children. By her teen years, the Puerto Rican community near where she grew up is huge and thriving.
Andrea must navigate being too American for Puerto Rico and too Puerto Rican for America. She straddles not only her culture, but her languages, as well as her role as a woman in a rapidly changing society and a father stuck on the traditions of the past.
As readers, we don’t have to look or sound exactly like Andrea to empathize with her coming-of-age story. Her hardships are universal, her dedication to her family admirable, her determination to adapt to her circumstances inspiring. To be able to lift the lid and peer into another culture is a gift; to see your own culture reflected in a book like this a triumph.
If you’re interested in learning more about this time period, check out Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives, a collaborative effort between The Library of Congress Hispanic Division and the National Digital Library Program. Contra Costa County librarians have also created booklists to go along with The Things We Didn’t Know, celebrating America as the ultimate melting pot.
You can reserve a physical copy of The Things We Didn’t Know here or download a digital copy using Libby today. Check our events calendar to see if a library near you is hosting a book club featuring the Read Contra Costa 2024 titles. You’ll also have the chance to meet the author, Elba Iris Pérez, in person at the Pleasant Hill Library on November 9th or virtually on November 12th which will later be posted to our YouTube channel.
For more information about Read Contra Costa and additional reading lists please visit our Read Contra Costa page.
Add a comment to: Read Contra Costa 2024