Pérez, Loida Maritza 1963-

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PÉREZ, Loida Maritza 1963-

PERSONAL: Born 1963, in Dominican Republic; immigrated to United States. Education: Cornell University, graduated 1987.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Viking, 375 Hudson, St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer and educator.

AWARDS, HONORS: New York Foundation for the Arts grant, 1991; Ragdale Foundation grant, 1994; Pauline and Henry Louis Gates fellowship, 1996; Recognized by El Diario as one of the fifty outstanding Latinas in the United States, 1999; residencies from Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Ucross Foundation, Cottages at Hedgebrook, Villa Montalvo, and the Millay Arts Colony.

WRITINGS:

Geographies of Home (novel), Viking (New York,

NY), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals, including Bomb, Latina, and Callaloo.

SIDELIGHTS: Loida Maritza Pérez is a Dominican writer who came to the United States at a young age and who has lived in New York City and, more recently, in New Mexico. She contributed to a number of periodicals and journals before publishing her debut novel, Geographies of Home, an investigation into the immigrant experience. A reviewer for Idiot's Guides online, who also interviewed Pérez, wrote that she "portrays an immigrant experience that few writers have chronicled and many readers might find unimaginable. In her graphic description of the troubles of one family, she exposes lives untouched by the promises of the American Dream."

The novel focuses on Papito and Aurelia and their fourteen children, Dominican immigrants to the United States who struggle in their Brooklyn neighborhood against discrimination and poverty. Iliana, the youngest child, having previously left the family to attend college, where she was the victim of racism, returns home when family problems develop. Her sister Marina is suicidal and on the verge of a complete breakdown after being sexually assaulted, and another sister, Rebecca, refuses to leave her abusive husband. Iliana is not warmly received by her siblings, however, and as a Latina reviewer noted, in this regard, Pérez "underscores the dual existence every immigrant's child navigates."

Papito and Aurelia contemplate returning to the Dominican Republic but are aware that their adult children still need them. Jim Hannan wrote in World Literature Today that Pérez "adds to a tradition in Caribbean fiction, in which the house offers beleaguered individuals illusory stability and independence but does not help them find a place for themselves in the world." Pérez also endows Aurelia with extrasensory powers and the ability to shape-shift, a talent she inherited from her mother.

The Idiot's Guides interviewer asked Pérez if the elements of surrealism and magic were essential to the story. Pérez answered that they were, "because in the novel, as in life itself, which is surreal, I wanted both the magic and the mundane to coexist. . . . I pitted these elements against each other because I wanted to explore issues of perception, madness, and reality while illustrating that none of these is easily definable."

"Pérez relates much of this story in eerie flashbacks," wrote Erica Sanders in the New York Times Book Review. Sanders added, "Memories of a plentiful island life in the Dominican Republic collide with Brooklyn's alienating landscapes." Library Journal's Reba Leiding felt that "we don't fully understand why Iliana came to be so different from the rest of the family, but the storytelling is so powerful we don't care." A Publishers Weekly contributor concluded a review of Geographies of Home by saying that Pérez tells her story "with a steady hand, and though the rendition of cultural dislocation is bleak, the powerful message is of the redeeming power of family love that contributes to individual courage and self-fulfillment."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1999, Vanessa Bush, review of Geographies of Home, p. 962.

Latina, March, 1999, review of Geographies of Home, p. 20.

Library Journal, January, 1999, Reba Leiding, review of Geographies of Home, p. 158; February 15, 2000, Harold Augenbraum, review of Geographies of Home, p. 228.
New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1999, Erica Sanders, review of Geographies of Home, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, December 21, 1998, review of Geographies of Home, p. 53.

World Literature Today, summer, 2000, Jim Hannan, review of Geographies of Home, p. 596.