APRIL 3, 2025 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT | By Nalani Wood (Staff Writer)
Disclaimer: This piece contains spoilers.
I finished Elizabeth Acevedo’s newest novel, “Family Lore,” on a train to Tokyo over spring break. I read the last 30 pages with silent tears rolling down my cheeks, pooling at my chin. I admit I’m prone to waterworks, but the beautiful exploration of family, motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood, death and birth in “Family Lore” would make even the most stoic reader shed a few tears.
The book follows the women of the Marte family as they prepare for a living wake hosted by Flor, the eldest Marte sister, who has an uncanny ability to anticipate when people will die. All the Marte women carry some sort of subtle magic. The middle sister, Pastora, senses truth, a power so specific she can tell if someone believes their own lies. Acevedo uses this tool of magical realism to explore the conflict of knowing too much.
After Flor announces to her family that she is hosting a living wake without explaining why, Acevedo guides the story through Flor’s daughter Ona’s anthropological research into her family. The reader is taken back and forth in time, from the Dominican Republic where the Marte mothers grew up and where their daughters started their lives, to New York, where they all ended up.
The Marte farm in the Dominican Republic shaped the Marte women’s lives in very different ways. For Yadi, Pastora’s daughter, spending time in the Dominican Republic with her grandmother before she passed helped her through her darkest moments as a young adult. Yadi’s magical gift only came to her after her grandmother passed away; her abuela’s fervor for limes entered Yadi’s life as an extraordinary gift for vegan cooking.
This intergenerational passing of skill and wisdom features prominently throughout “Family Lore.” Ona describes herself as having an “alpha vagina,” which manifests as an intimate control over the flow of life and pleasure. Ona rejected pregnancy for most of her life, a modern woman trying to make her mark in academia, but when Ona and her partner start trying for a baby, Ona’s relationship with her womb, and the truths she can feel, illustrate how powerful and devastating her pussy power is. Diagnosed with uterine fibroids around the time she starts trying for a baby, Ona can feel every time her uterus rejects a new fetus.
The finale of this heart-wrenching novel is not surprising, but I still held my breath as Flor sent her daughter home after the wake, casually inviting her over for pancakes the next morning. I knew a truth I did not want to know before it happened, and read as Flor collapsed on the floor while Pastora ran in the door, narrowly missing one last goodbye. On the night Flor passed away, Ona finally conceived a child. Flor’s living wake was more than a celebration of her life. It was a catalyst for her family to face themselves, their pasts, and what they wanted for their futures. Death is a catalyst for truth and greater appreciation for life, health, and freedom.
This November, my grandma, Oma An, passed away. She had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years, but still called my mom every day, asked about me and my sister and talked about her life and her sons and her experiences. What really got me at the end of “Family Lore” was that Flor would never meet her granddaughter.
The best kind of book makes you want to act. For me, this book inspired me to ask more about my family’s stories. Losing people you love is inevitable, but after reading “Family Lore,” I remember that, just like Grandma Marte lived on in Yadi’s gift with limes, and Flor lives on in the new life Ona will bring into the world, my Oma An can live on in my love for writing, clogs, diet coke and Rummikub.