Archive for June 5th, 2019
Oscar Cásares’s new novel, “Where We Come From,”
A former school teacher, Nina is always doing favors for everyone: first checking in on her ailing mother, then taking her to doctor’s appointments, and finally selling her own house, so she could live with and help Mamá Meche. But after doing a favor for a friend, her maid Rumalda, Nina finds herself entangled in human trafficking. Rumalda begs Nina to shelter her daughter and granddaughter after they are smuggled across the border. She lets them stay in the pink house while they wait to be taken farther into the U. S. The woman Nina deals with at first seems innocuous enough, but her associates El Kobe and Rigo are dangerous. After Nina does the favor for Rumalda, El Kobe and Rigo bring more Central American immigrants across the border to the pink house. El Kobe pays Nina $50 a day for the house, the food she makes, and to keep quiet. In a few days, Nina collects more money from El Kobe than Mamá Meche collected for a month’s rent.
You can read my review of Oscar Cásares’s novel Where We Come From, in the June 2019, edition of The Brooklyn Rail by clicking on the image below.
You can buy Oscar Cásares’s Where We Come From at Barnes & Noble.
