Speak To Me Of Home by Jeanine Cummins

Many readers will know Jeanine Cummins from her previous (and controversial) bestseller, American Dirt.  The controversy arose because many questioned her writing about a culture (Mexican) that she wasn’t a part of. She was accused of stereotyping and cultural appropriation.

In this new novel (her fifth) Cummins has set the story around three generations of a family with Puerto Rican ancestry, specifically three women: Rafaela, Ruth and Daisy.

The novel opens with Daisy (aged 22), living in San Juan in the present day. She has gone there to discover her roots and is living in that city. A big storm is approaching, and Daisy finds herself having to go out into the looming bad weather. After an accident, she ends up in hospital fighting for her life.

Ruth, her mother, lives in Palisades, New York. She receives the dreaded phone call that no parent wants to get and makes plans to go to San Juan to be by Daisy’s bedside. Her mother, Rafaela also makes the journey with her.

As the story unfolds, we travel backwards and forwards in time, alternating between Puerto Rico and Rafaela’s story, to the USA to learn about Ruth and back to present-day Puerto Rico and Daisy’s predicament.

Rafaela is the matriarch in this story. She was born in Puerto Rico into a relatively wealthy family. Through misfortune, her family lost their wealth, and Rafaela was sent out to work. She met and married an American naval officer, and they had two children.  After 10 years, they moved to the USA to live. Their daughter Ruth, in an effort to fit in, lets go of her language and memories of Puerto Rico. Ruth, in turn, marries and has three children of her own. Daisy, her only daughter, wants to reconnect with her Puerto Rican heritage, much to her mother’s dismay.

The story looks at the relationships between these three women and how they all have a different sense of ‘belonging’.  There are some family secrets that come to light, and some prejudices that become evident through each of their stories. The questions of mixed race, ‘whiteness’ and how each of them fits into their own culture are themes throughout the novel. The three generations all have a different perspective on what is important to them in terms of getting on in life and what is fundamental to their existence, all framed by their own experiences.

This is an engaging read and a deep look at the mother-daughter relationships between generations.

Reviewer: Rachel White

Hachette