Elizabeth Acevedo

A Novel

Family Lore

Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband’s infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor’s wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling’s problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she’s decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted.

And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it’s worth it to keep trying—to have a child, and the anthropology research that’s begun to feel lackluster.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.

An amazing web of stories that spans across the generations of the Marte women. I started this book with no expectations and am left in awe of this story and Elizabeth Acevedo. Definitely one of my favorites for this year. 

“I have sometimes felt like an occupant in this flesh; something that is being hosted. Until I had my first love, although looking back, those were a youngster's emotions.

I truly became human when I became pregnant with you. Nothing, not even making love, had ever arrived me to my own body like growing another person. It was primal, physical, the sensations that became new to me. I would wake up and brush my teeth, and the moment the toothbrush touched my tongue I would begin to gag. A visceral shock from the dream world to the body ... You know me, Ona, I struggle with decisions sometimes. But from the moment I learned I was carrying you, the most animal of choices became easy. What do I want to eat? Not that, not that, yes, this. I would stand at my station at the button factory, and hunger, urinating, resting were sensations as loud as the machines whirring around me. The cues were urgent, unignorable. I have never known so clearly what I wanted and needed at almost all times.

Morningside Park, you know that patch by 110th where the baseball fields are? They had just mowed it, the tractor not yet having rolled off the field, and I swear to you I wanted to drop to my knees. The grass smelled alive, the milk of each cut blade sweetening the air, and I felt like my nose picked up every single drop of dew. I'd known beautiful fields, and admired trees and birds, but with a second heartbeat in my body, my senses were newly electrified.

You grounded me here, with both feet, on both knees, stooped on all fours, heaving to bring you forth. I have known death since before I was born, but I had not truly known life until I gave it to you.” Pgs 13-14

“In retrospect, Tía Matilde and I should have talked about conception and fertility long ago. It amazes me how few questions I know to ask, or whom to ask them of, until it's already too late for the answers to be use-ful. How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?” Pg 138-139

“How could I explain? I'd left young because I had to. Because this woman who wanted to protect me so much had let her care braid itself into a vise around my throat. I could not be a woman in her home.” Pg 146

“When you know your people, you can tell whether their voices are raised in anger or joy from a distance. The White people might get startled by any outburst, but your people know when it’s a bark of laughter or the cutting remark that’s going to lead to fists.”

“Maybe Yadi had never fully trusted enough of the older women to ever confide and prove they weren’t who she thought them to be.”

Turia L. M.

An amazing web of stories that spans across the generations of the Marte women. I started this book with no expectations and am left in awe of this story and Elizabeth Acevedo. Definitely one of my favorites for this year. 

Family Lore, My Personal Favorites

“I have sometimes felt like an occupant in this flesh; something that is being hosted. Until I had my first love, although looking back, those were a youngster's emotions.

I truly became human when I became pregnant with you. Nothing, not even making love, had ever arrived me to my own body like growing another person. It was primal, physical, the sensations that became new to me. I would wake up and brush my teeth, and the moment the toothbrush touched my tongue I would begin to gag. A visceral shock from the dream world to the body ... You know me, Ona, I struggle with decisions sometimes. But from the moment I learned I was carrying you, the most animal of choices became easy. What do I want to eat? Not that, not that, yes, this. I would stand at my station at the button factory, and hunger, urinating, resting were sensations as loud as the machines whirring around me. The cues were urgent, unignorable. I have never known so clearly what I wanted and needed at almost all times.

I remember one day walking through

Morningside Park, you know that patch by 110th where the baseball fields are? They had just mowed it, the tractor not yet having rolled off the field, and I swear to you I wanted to drop to my knees. The grass smelled alive, the milk of each cut blade sweetening the air, and I felt like my nose picked up every single drop of dew. I'd known beautiful fields, and admired trees and birds, but with a second heartbeat in my body, my senses were newly electrified.

You grounded me here, with both feet, on both knees, stooped on all fours, heaving to bring you forth. I have known death since before I was born, but I had not truly known life until I gave it to you.” Pgs 13-14

“In retrospect, Tía Matilde and I should have talked about conception and fertility long ago. It amazes me how few questions I know to ask, or whom to ask them of, until it's already too late for the answers to be use-ful. How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?” Pg 138-139

“How could I explain? I'd left young because I had to. Because this woman who wanted to protect me so much had let her care braid itself into a vise around my throat. I could not be a woman in her home.” Pg 146

“When you know your people, you can tell whether their voices are raised in anger or joy from a distance. The White people might get startled by any outburst, but your people know when it’s a bark of laughter or the cutting remark that’s going to lead to fists.”

“Maybe Yadi had never fully trusted enough of the older women to ever confide and prove they weren’t who she thought them to be.”

“I know the heart is a burial ground for memories that shame and hurt. You can visit and place flowers there and make it a tomb. Or let those things act as fertilizer and pay no homage.”

Family Lore A Novel