Customer Reviews

Geographies of Home

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I loved this haunting yet inspiring look at a Latino family. I've read some of the more negative reviews on this site, some of which note that it is hard to believe some of the things that motivate key characters, and therefore, dismiss this wonderful work. I completely disagree. Someone on the edge of mental breakdown could very well be pushed pass the point of no return by an event as traumatic as a rape. There are many women who, for reasons most of us will never fathom, stay in physically abusive relationships, so Pasion's story is very believable.

I think Loida Maritza Perez has drawn a detailed protrait of a family that exhibits many of the characteristics of immigrant (and other) families everywhere. They suffer heartbreaks and challenges, some of them extreme. They shift and reposition their roles relative to other family members. They have moments when love prevails, and moments when they give in to the baser human emotions and human failiings. But above all, Iliana's family is indeed a loving family, and a fascinating one at that.

The struggles they face are very familiar to many of us who are immigrants, and/or who have grown up with particular religious backgrounds. The fact that to some the motivations and actions of what I see as very well-drawn characters are unfamiliar, even strange, is all the more reason why this work is so important. It gives us an opportunity to learn about differences, while at the same time allowing us to glimpse the many similarities that tie all of us together.

I highly recommend Geographies of Home, and urge you to look for both the new and the familiar, because they are both there, evoked in beautiful language that will both haunt and inspire you to seek to over your own trials and tribulations with your families.

At first it was a little hard to get into it, it kind of dragged. But as you get to know the characters you can't put it down. Maybe the story could have done without Pasion (he was a little extreme) but he still ended up working well with the story. Great read!!!

GEOGRAPHIES OF HOME is riveting from start to finish. Loida Maritza Perez, in her evocative, attention-getting prologue alone, establishes a tone of richness and depth. What follows is a story well beyond conventionality. She presents a compelling tale that flows beautifully as if it were an intimate, personalized character analysis of members of a very complex family. The author has structured a work both mystical and convincingly realistic about a severely troubled Dominican family. Perez, in my opinion, is brilliant first, in creating complicated, authentic characters and then telling their stories with graceful, inventive language. The reader shares the horrors of contemporary migration with all its incumbent trauma. However, I suggest that it is the predominance of Caribbean spiritualism that gives this story its illusive, absolutely haunting character. Loida Maritza Perez is masterful at her craft. This novel will stay with you. Very Highly Recommended. Te felicito profundamente, Loida.

Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)

AN EXCELLENT DEBUT. TO THE REVIEWER WHO COMMENCED HER REVIEW PRAISING ALVAREZ AND BASHING PEREZ.... JUST BECAUSE PEREZ AND ALVAREZ ARE BOTH DOMINICAN DO NOT EXPECT PROFOUND SIMILARITIES. PEREZ WRITES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE YOUNG LATINAS, POOR DOMINICANAS, NOT MORE AFFLUENT DOMINICANAS LIKE JULIA ALVAREZ'S FAMILY. I LOVE BOTH AUTHORS BUT THEIR STYLES ARE DIFFERENT, EACH STANDS ON ITS OWN. PEREZ FOCUSES ON THE EXPIRIENCES OF A TROUBLED, POOR IMMIGRANT FAMILY. THIS IS NOT YOUR RUN OF THE MILL POOR KIDS GROWING UP IN THE GHETTO, ITS FRESHER, ITS MORE REALISTIC. IT POINGIANTLY PORTRAYS ONE FACET OF THE DOMINICAN IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN NEW YORK.

AS YOU CAN TELL FROM HER NOVEL NOT ALL DOMINICANS LIVE IN WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, ARE RAISED BY SINGLE MOTHERS OR INVOLVED IN DRUG TRAFICKING.

THE PROTAGONIST SHARES THE SPOTLIGHT WITH ALL OTHER IMPORTANT CHARACTERS AND OFTEN FADES INTO THE BACKGROUND ONLY TO REMERGE AND ADD FRESH PERSPECTIVE.

THE NOVEL TOUCHES ON UNIVERSAL TOPICS: WOMEN'S GENDER ROLES, LOVE, ACCEPTANCE, POVERTY. ITS WONDERFUL, ITS REAL THERE ARE NO SUGAR COATED HAPPY ENDINGS. THE NOVEL IS VERY INTERESTING BECAUSE IT USES SURREALISM TO PROJECT A REALITY....... READ THE NOVEL! A VERY REALISTIC , POWERFUL PORTRAYAL OF A HARD LIFE.

It explores relationship of one daughter to her family. Iliana has gone away to school only to feel responsible for the problem facing her family back home in New York. She quits school to go back to her family and she realizes that some of the problems can not be so easily overcomed. Her father is one of the few male characters in the recent past to be a strong family man and not the typically portrayed latin macho that has no interest in their own family. It is a very fresh view at mental illness, family togetherness, and the need to be your own person.

This novel is so beautifully layered with the struggles of adjustment...the meaning of home and how immigrants adjust, successfully and unsuccessfully. I will require this novel next semester when I teach my Freshman Compostion course at the college level. What an insightful, rewarding read.

All I can say is I want more, more, more. One of the brightest latina writer of our time!!From one Dominicana to the other... Thank you Loida Maritza Perez, and I will be sure to look and buy the next one!

this book is one of the best books i have ever read. why? because it touches on subjects that never make the new york top ten list for books. this is not michael crichton or john grisham or oprahs book club. this is life. thie is reality. she writes about subjects that are common in everyday american life whether you are latino/a or not.

perez writes with an ease that is more than natural. her writing no doubt reflects experiences that she had growing up. it is ethereal and corporeal at the same time. i felt myself reflected in her writings even though she is dominican and i am chicano. her writing was relaxed and not forced. almost as if she was speaking the words to me or as if i were watching before my eyes what was going on in the words. while she may never be compared to great classical writers her writing is the closest i have seen a modern latino/a writer in the last twenty years come to these writers. it is not as complicated or descriptive as the great russian writers but it evokes the same emotional response with a fluid writing that reaches into me and pulls out my past, a past so similar to the story. her writing captures the soul of latinos/latinas. it captures the nuances of our being. or how we act and react and live and don't live.

As a fellow Dominicana and also a graduate of Cornell University I could relate in more ways than one with Ms. Perez and many of the struggles that she related in this novel. The manner in which she expressed the life situations and approaches taken to ameliorate her familial situations was priceless. It is a book worth reading not once but over and over again. Although there were some loose ends that needed to be tied up, I still felt like it was a book that made a point and conveyed a very powereful message. A message that is especially meaningful to Latinos whose parents were not educated here and who are dealing with the schizophrenic nature of living within to cultures...I am very happy to see Loida joining in with Julia Alvarez and Junot Diaz as yet another one of a group of prominent Dominican writers...and yet another (Junot as well) Cornell graduate.

What made this story even more haunting for me was the realization that, although some reviewers disagree, people who are already mentally ill can become unglued by one rape, and people who are filled with superstitious ideas can become confused by religion; people who feel out of control will often let other people control them, and people who live with craziness struggle to find their own sanity.

Are we supposed to believe in all the "magic" that happens in this story? I don't know. I think they are metaphors. Ms. Perez uses magic and religion and mental illness as tools to tell a story about people who get lost because they don't live the the lives they really want to live.

While Iliana's intention to go home and help her family leads her back to her house, it's in her understanding that she can only live her own life and become who she WANTS to be, that she can really go home.