Review of Things We Don't Know by Elba Iris Perez

*Things We Didn't Know* by Elba Iris Perez (2024). Published by Gallery Books.

I read this book before I headed off of on a grand adventure to South Korea for two months, but when I was preparing to go to Korea and had an entire month between finishing graduate school and my flights, I had a lot of free time. I was trying to get through so many different books and movies during this time, and I was especially trying to diversify the kinds of books I was consuming specifically.

I knew I had kind of always read more African American and Asian/Asian American literature, and that there were other regions of the world that I was missing out on. Voices from the Caribbean and Latin America have been something I’m more interested in lately, so when I saw this author’s name on the shelf in my local library, I picked the book up.

It was the synopsis that ultimately led me to decide to check it out and bring it home with me. I flew through this book in about 2.5 days, as I was reading other books at the same time, and I truly was very interested in its stories and characters.

There’s already a bit of rambling coming from me already, so let’s get right into the review then, shall we?

After moving from Puerto Rico back to Massachusetts in the late 1950s, one family has to learn how to adjust.

In this novel, our protagonist and main focus is Andrea, who is nine years old when her mother decides to take her and her brother away from the town they’re living in. They, along with their father, were living in a small Puerto Rican community within a factory town in Massachusetts called Woronoco.

This is the town the kids only have known so far, so when their mother just dumps them off with family in a Puerto Rican village, it’s a heavy adjustment. Their Spanish even isn’t as good as what it could be, as they were living in the United States in the 1950s and educated in the local school system.

However, they are eventually brought back to the United States within a couple of months after their father comes looking for them. Their time away in Puerto Rico will forever change how they view life in the United States.

Not only do they have to deal with the dynamics of a fragmented and somewhat broken family, as their mother eventually leaves them after this previous episode, but they’re in the US in the 1950s.

Racism is pretty much to be expected here, especially since they’re in a small town. Not only do these kids now feel like they don’t belong in the United States as they grow older, interacting with people their age and beyond, but they also now realize they are not really that Puerto Rican either. They’re kids of the diaspora.

That said, we also get to learn more about Andrea’s brother. His influence on the story is undeniable as you continue reading through the story, especially as time passes and the Vietnam War begins. He won’t be able to stay out of trouble, and their father doesn’t know the extent of his problems until it’s too late to save his son.

Anyways, this is a generational tale with a lot of heartbreak, but also a lot of resilience. There are discussions of mental health and how it is impacted by being a member of the diaspora, which was interesting to me to read about through the framework of being set in the past.

Overall Thoughts

I’d say if you’re interested in the premise of this book, definitely go pick it up. It’s rooted in a certain moment and time in the narrator’s life, which is why I said before that it was a coming of age novel in many ways. It’s also a story about migration and its impacts, although that’s not directly what is being discussed sometimes.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I think that there is a lot to learn from these kinds of stories, and because of that I want to keep reading more whenever they pop up in my local library or if I have the money to buy a book and support the author.

As I said before, pick this one up if you’re interested in the plot!

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