Publishers Weekly
10/23/2023
Perez’s rich English-language debut novel (after the nonfiction title El teatro como bandera) 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. Titi Machi unapologetically wears men’s clothing despite transphobic relatives back in Massachusetts, and she nurtures the love-starved siblings by tenderly braiding Andrea’s hair, ironing their school uniforms, and comforting them over their mother’s neglect. 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. Perez 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. Perez proves to be a natural storyteller. Agent: Laurie Liss, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
"Elba Iris Pérez’s debut novel, The Things We Didn’t Know, breathes with narrative magic ... Andrea's coming-of-age as she searches for a stable sense of family will resonate with readers as if it were their own reality."
—Harry Youtt, poet and author of I'm Never Not Thinking of You
"The Things We Didn't Know will sweep you up from Massachusetts to Puerto Rico and back again in a whirlwind of unfamiliar cultures, betrayals, cruelties, and loves. Elba Iris Pérez delivers a wonderfully compelling read."
—Judith Simon Prager, co-author of The Worst Is Over and author of What the Dolphin Said
“Elba Iris Pérez gifts us with rich and powerful storytelling, the triumphant intelligence of the heart.”
—Elidio La Torre Lagares
“The Things We Didn’t Know, Elba Iris Pérez’s debut novel, flows along two rivers: one in Woronoco, which means ‘the winding river,’ and the other in Aguas Buenas, or the ‘untainted waters’ of Puerto Rico. As Andrea moves from a working-class, all-American town to the great disparities of American colonization and back, she must tame even wilder waters, coming to terms with self, race, and personal identity in the shadow of history.”
—Elidio La Torre Lagares, author of Wonderful Wasteland and other natural disasters
poet and author of I’m Never Not Thinking of Harry Youtt
The Things We Didn’t Know, breathes with narrative magic…Andrea’s coming-of-age as she searches for a stable sense of family will resonate with readers as if it were their own reality.”
MARCH 2024 - AudioFile
The vocal agility of narrator Marisa Blake transports listeners back to the 1950s. Nine-year-old Andrea Rodriguez and her brother are whisked away from Woronoco, Massachusetts, to Puerto Rico by their disinterested single mother and left in the care of relatives. Missing home, they contact their father, Luis, and the three return to Woronoco. Blake aptly narrates Andrea's emotions as she grapples with her Puerto Rican identity, having a single father, and peer pressure. She nimbly changes tone and accent when dealing with delicate issues such as racism and LGBTQIA matters. Voicing Luis in English and Spanish, Blake's changes in accent, timbre, and tone are impressive, successfully conveying a father who is trying his best. A stirring story about familial love. A.M. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2023-11-04
Caught between two worlds, a girl born in Puerto Rico struggles to find her place in 1950s and ’60s America.
Though Andrea Rodríguez and her little brother, Pablo, were born in Puerto Rico, all they know is the company town of Woronoco, Massachusetts, their home since they were babies. In 1954, their father, Luis José, sent for the family after finding work at a paper mill. Over the years, their mother, Raquel, comes to regret the move, resenting Woronoco’s remoteness and mourning her alienation from her sisters, cultural traditions, and mother tongue. On the first day of summer vacation after Andrea finishes third grade, Raquel flees to Puerto Rico with the children, her second escape attempt. (The first was foiled by her inability to drive.) Andrea and Pablo are forced to adapt to a new climate, new status quo, and new prejudices. Once again, they’re considered strangers in a strange land. Meanwhile, their mother seems to lose interest in them, failing to enroll them in school and ditching them with their aunts to pal around with an old flame. Whiplash results when their father shows up out of the blue and whisks them back to Massachusetts. Upon returning to Woronoco, Andrea and Pablo must simultaneously readjust to American culture and the English language and navigate the standard growing pains of tween- and teendom. Their father’s casual racism and conservative opinions cause increasing friction, culminating in a moment that overshadows Andrea’s life for eight years. Author Pérez does an exceptional job of telling a story from a child’s perspective, especially in the first half of the book; Andrea’s gradual loss of trust in her mother strikes a particularly poignant note. As the siblings’ time in Puerto Rico recedes and they hurtle toward adolescence and then adulthood, the narrative falters somewhat, feeling more rushed and containing less of the rich background that made the initial chapters so compelling.
A coming-of-age tale that beautifully evokes the contrasting environments of Puerto Rico and Massachusetts.
