Book Of The Unknown America Analysis

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In the story The Book of the Unknown Americans written by Cristina Henriquez, we learn about many characters that live in the U.S and have a Hispanic origin. During while reading the novel we see a common emotion throughout the book, guilt. Alma, Mayor, and Maribel suffer from a strong sense of guilt which affected their choices and interactions through the book. We can see examples of guilt mostly at the end of the book when Maribel’s father is shot down and pronounced dead hours later at the hospital, but it’s not only located in the end we also learn from the guilt Alma feels for Maribel’s mental condition. Alma’s is the mother of Maribel and Wife of Arturo, she comes to the U.S. for personal reasons and a better life for herself and her family. She experiences guilt as…show more content…
Alma blames herself for this accident because she says, “ I’ve must of jerked the ladder”. ( Henriquez 101). After the accident they needed to go to the U.S because they needed a good school that would help Marabel with the rehabilitation, which also meant they were going to have to leave their old lives to come to the U.S. After their arrival to the U.S. Alma spots a boy who keeps staring at them when they first to get to the gas station but she doesn’t pay much attention, and while exiting at same thing happened with the same boy. They have another incident with the boy later on in the story but nothing serious until she finds him with Marabel violating her. She scared him off when she came to rescue Maribel from him. She also keeps this incident to herself. She goes to the apartments to warn the boy to leave them alone by saying ” Leave alone”(152). She feels guilt and anger because she wasn’t paying attention to Marabel and caused for her to suffer this accident. Arturo and Alma constantly fight and they usually bring up the topic of Maribel's accident, Arturo blames her which causes even for her to feel more

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