The Book of Unknown Americans

“But you could do more than pull mushrooms in the dark.”

Though Arturo owned a construction business in Mexico, when he arrives in America he is viewed as a person capable of only the most menial labor. His job harvesting mushrooms in the dark angers him and Alma and suggests that the land of promise they’d hoped for might be beyond reach.

“I felt acutely the meagerness of it, the insufficiency. We wanted more. We wanted what we had come here for.”

Alma already feels that her future is limited, as her husband is forced to take a job that is beneath him, one that denies him a break to eat or drink during the workday, and it is a struggle to get her daughter properly enrolled in school.

“Maybe I’ll make something. Something to remind me of home. But I didn’t have any of the ingredients I needed, so I just stood there, staring at the flat, cast iron pan, feeling homesickness charging at me like a roaring wave.”

Food connects the immigrant characters to home and identity. When unable to cook because she lacks basic ingredients, Alma feels unable to cope. The recipes of home would offer her comfort and would help root her in her new setting as well.