The Myth of the American Dream: Cristina Henriquez on Her New Novel, “The Book of Unknown Americans”
By Amy Friedman
Immigration is a hotly debated topic, though more often through the lenses of policy proposals and the scoring of political points than about the very real people involved. Cristina Henriquez’s new novel, “The Book of Unknown Americans,” works to bridge this gap by exposing the immigrant experience in first person, giving voice to those who are frequently spoken about or spoken for without actually being spoken to. The unknown Americans in her book narrate their own chapters, and in doing so speak to their unique cultural traditions and backgrounds that too often become muddled in the minds of native-born citizens. This narrative technique allows for the immigrant experience to come alive with a richness and complexity that routinely goes unsung in third-person accounts that have a tendency to cast immigrants as menacing outsiders rather than as integral members of the American landscape.
The book begins by introducing us to Arturo and Alma Rivera, a couple who make the arduous journey from Mexico to Delaware with their teenage daughter Maribel in order to find better educational options for her after she suffers a brain injury. We discover along the way the many sacrifices the family makes to give their daughter a better future, and we are introduced to the tight-knit community of immigrants in Delaware among whom they live, people also looking for opportunities not available to them in their native countries. Each story is as remarkable as the one who tells it, though common threads emerge. Over and again, the need to identify these characters as immigrants comes as much from the outside as it does from within, though we find that the similarities between native-born citizens and immigrants are more salient and numerous than the differences. These differences, however, are so often stressed or make life so difficult for those who must navigate them that the characters lean on each other for support, allowing an even greater opportunity for the outside world to define them by their immigrant status. I spoke with the author about her thoughts on several of these factors.
Your characters represent a broad spectrum of backgrounds and behaviors relating to the immigrant experience. Too often, it seems that Americans born and raised here believe the immigrant experience, or immigrants themselves, to be monolithic. Did this contribute to your decision to create the characters as you did?
Well, one of my goals for writing the book was to push back a little bit against stereotypes and commonly held narratives, and one of those as you’ve pointed out, I think rightly, is that Americans when they hear the word “immigrant” tend to think of someone who’s Latino, and beyond that they tend to think of someone who’s Mexican. One of the characters in the book, Celia, at one point in the Christmas scene when they’re all together, makes underhanded reference to that. She’s like, “México, México. As if the rest of us don’t exist.” What gets lost in the crowd is that there are people from lots of different countries all across Central and South America who are coming to the United States, and that they’re all distinct onto themselves. And so, I wanted to portray characters that represented their country in some specific way, but also that had a very universal humanity. The characters all have their own prejudices and intolerances toward everybody else and their own kinds of biases. There’s no monolithic entity of a Latino person, obviously. And I think that people know that intellectually, but sometimes it’s easy to gloss over when you hear the word “immigrant” or “Latino.” You think of one stock person.
What I thought was also so interesting was the way you turned the narrative on its head to look at some of the flaws in the American system. Your characters find many, but certainly not all, of the things they are looking for in America. For example, while the educational system here meets Maribel’s needs in many ways, her father cannot use his experience in the workplace. What are the more subtle messages you wish to impart about all that America has (or does not have) to offer?
I think I was interested in the subversion of the American Dream narrative, or the myth of the American Dream. I think the myth exists as a real motivating factor for so many people, but I think then there are so many people who come here and they find that it isn’t all they thought it would be. At the beginning of the book they arrive at this apartment building and Alma thinks it’s going to be like in the movies where there’s going to be a white picket fence, manicured shrubs and flower boxes, and they end up in this cinderblock building that’s kind of run down and not the best place. Also, the fact that there’s this other narrative, which is immigration, that everyone comes for a “better life,” and Arturo says they didn’t come for a better life, that in Mexico they had a beautiful life. They came for Maribel.
One of the things that Maribel’s family as well as the other families in the book showcase is a close-knit community, something that’s often lacking in America today. Why was this important to highlight?
It’s hard for me to say in any general way. I was born in Delaware, then moved a year later to Miami. I moved to Virginia, then back to Delaware, to Illinois, to Iowa for school, to Dallas, and again to Illinois. I just have that personal sense of dislocation. I have a personal sense of yearning for belonging. That sense has infiltrated my fiction. The characters’ challenges were far greater than mine were. Having to meet new people all over again is something I carry so strongly in me. I write a lot about houses. This specific apartment building. My dad was born in Panama. We went to visit every year. We left our doors open. We knew all our neighbors. There was a real warmth. I’ve never had that kind of experience here. Part of our cultural disconnection has to do with wealth. Disposable income allows you to move around. A wealthy economy has a downside–we’re dispersed everywhere. You lose something in that regard.
the book of unknown americans
We get Maribel’s story through the eyes of other narrators, but not through Maribel’s perspective. I read that this was not a purposeful omission on your part, but in looking back, do you feel that this makes her story even more poignant, or perhaps largely untold? Or, are most of us perhaps defined mainly through the ways in which we affect others?
This was not one I anticipated at all. I wanted all the tenants to have a space for them to tell their stories. I thought Alma would tell her story, then Mayor, then the neighbor’s voice, and then the pattern would repeat. Obviously you hear Maribel’s voice through these narratives. You hear her in conversation with Mayor, you hear her in her journal entries. After more consideration, I think she wouldn’t have yet acquired the kind of voice she would have needed to tell the story. If the book would have gone on, she would have gained the fortitude. But she is the motivating factor. She motivates Mayor to do everything he does. She is the reason her family comes to America.
Micho (one of the characters in the novel) says, “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 we’re a lot like them. And who would they hate then?” Is your book an attempt to change this perception, to break through that two-dimensional view of immigrants and to remove the option to hate that which is unknown?
That’s what all fiction is–the point of it is, if you’re doing anything that’s artful or talking about the human experience, to break down some kind of barrier or wall. People say they look at other people differently after reading the book. To have that as the reaction is incredible. Broadening people’s sense of empathy, that’s what good fiction does.
To that end, I encourage people to go to my website to share their stories. This book is part of an ongoing journey to allow these stories to be heard. Please visit: unknownamericans.tumblr.com.
“The Book of Unknown Americans”
By Cristina Henriquez
Knopf, 304 pages, $24.95
– See more at: http://lit.newcity.com/2014/12/03/the-myth-of-the-american-dream-cristina-henriquez-on-her-new-novel-the-book-of-unknown-americans/#sthash.utKFwVKy.dpuf
As you get things, you must protect them. The more things you have, the more protection you need.
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The American Dream Never Fades;
CHICAGO — There was a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song that came out in 1988 called “American Dream.” It had a catchy tune but as a 14-year-old, I recoiled from it because it was so negative.
“You wake up in the middle of the night.
Your sheets are wet and your face is white,
You tried to make a good thing last,
How could something so good go bad so fast?”
A satire about political scandals, the song wasn’t terribly surprising, coming as it did from the same guys who slandered an entire city with “Chicago,” which protested the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The point is, CSNY’s “American Dream,” though bouncy, was a real bummer–as are songs of the same title by Hank Williams Jr., Lucinda Williams and, most recently, the pop duo MKTO.
The American Dream has seen hard times and, some say, is on the ropes again.
This is what news headlines were declaring after the release of results from a New York Times poll this month. More than two-thirds of respondents said they felt things in this country have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.
And according to the subsequent reporting, “just 64 percent of Americans believe in the American Dream.”
But this is only true if you believe that the American Dream is to get rich.
Yes, the much-cited statistic stems from the answer to this question: “Do you think it is still possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich?”
Unless you’re Augie March, a character in a Saul Bellow novel, you might have a different take on what the so-called American Dream is.
I did my own public, albeit completely unscientific, poll of the term on my social media networks and was unable to find anyone who defined the American Dream with a “get rich” answer.
One reader, Sue Harrison, said, “I believe the American Dream is based on the freedoms we are fortunate to have granted to us as American citizens.”
Another, Teresa Rufer Davis, wrote, “World peace. The CURE for cancer. Citizens working together. Classless financial negotiations cousined with big return for big risk. That’s all.”
Don Sellers echoed both my sons’ sentiments (which involved going to college, getting a house, getting married and having kids) with: “The freedom and opportunity to live and work and prosper.”
Lynn Oscar Phillipps said “Peace,” while Jose Martinez summed it up with “the American Dream it’s a never-ending dream that can be fulfilled, is there any limit? Yes there is, we put the limit,” which I’ll paraphrase as the American Dream being whatever you want it to be.
Over on the Independent Women’s Forum blog, Jennifer Marsico also pushed back at the simplification of such a deeply personal and diverse concept. She cited a September 2013 poll from The Washington Post and the Miller Center at the University of Virginia that “found that just 29 percent of Americans believe that becoming wealthy is at the heart of what the American Dream means–the lowest response from the list of options given.”
Though I like the oft-cited definition by James Truslow Adams–“life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement, regardless of social class or circumstances of birth”–my interpretation relies far more on Benjamin Franklin.
With his autobiography, Franklin is said to have sparked “the definitive formation of the American Dream,” according to historian J.A. Leo Lemay.
Though seen by most as a tome on hard work, virtue and wealth, the book always struck me as an object lesson on transformation. From hungry newcomer arriving in Philadelphia with only a few coins to becoming a printer, postmaster, scientist, university founder, statesman, diplomat and flirtatious chess master.
Just like this Founding Father, the American Dream’s strength is its ability to transform in whatever way is needed to ascend from modesty to greatness.
Whether it represents a dollar sign to some or the comfort of globally envied personal freedom to others, its strength gives it the ability to be either a catalyst or a comfort.
Either way: The American Dream is not on the ropes–but if it was, you’d be right to believe it will quickly rebound.
Esther J. Cepeda is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Her email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.
– See more at: http://www.gazettextra.com/20141220/esther_cepeda_the_american_dream_never_fades#sthash.mOz6pvgZ.dpuf
Why American? It’s Horatio Alger. It’s equality of opportunity. And, yes, probably getting rich. I wonder how many respondents are already affluent.
Posted on December 21, 2014
