The Things We Didn’t Know will be hot off the press this coming week (February 6, 2024). The inaugural winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us contest, Elba Iris Pérez’s “lyrical, cross-cultural coming-of-age debut novel explores a young girl’s childhood between 1950s Puerto Rico and a small Massachusetts factory town.”
Elidio La Torre Lagares (author of Wonderful Wasteland and other natural disasters) explains, “… 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.”
Note that, as part of the global launch of this book, Dr. La Torre Lagares and Dr. Carmen Haydée Rivera will present the author and her new book on February 14, 2024, at 10:00am in Sala Jorge Enjuto at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. [See previous post Elba Iris Pérez at the UPR.]
Description (Simon & Schuster): Andrea Rodríguez is nine years old when her mother whisks her and her brother, Pablo, away from Woronoco, the tiny Massachusetts factory town that is the only home they’ve known. With no plan and no money, she leaves them with family in the mountainside villages of Puerto Rico and promises to return.
Months later, when Andrea and Pablo are brought back to Massachusetts, they find their hometown significantly changed. As they navigate the rifts between their family’s values and all-American culture and face the harsh realities of growing up, they must embrace both the triumphs and heartache that mark the journey to adulthood.
A heartfelt, evocative portrait of another side of life in 1950s America, The Things We Didn’t Know establishes Elba Iris Pérez as a sensational new literary voice.
Elba Iris Pérez is from Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, spent her early childhood in Woronoco, Massachusetts, taught theater and history at the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, and now lives in Houston. She is also the author of El teatro como bandera, a history of street theater in Puerto Rico.
For more information, see https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Things-We-Didnt-Know/Elba-Iris-Perez/9781668012062
The Things We Didn’t Know will be hot off the press this coming week (February 6, 2024). The inaugural winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us contest, Elba Iris Pérez’s “lyrical, cross-cultural coming-of-age debut novel explores a young girl’s childhood between 1950s Puerto Rico and a small Massachusetts factory town.” Elidio La Torre Lagares
