AT A TIME WHEN THE UNITED STATES
is wracked with debates about what
constitutes a ‘real’ American,” wrote
Refinery29’s Elena Nicolaou, “this
rendering of the immigrant experience
couldn’t be more important.”
Nicolaou was referring to The Affairs of the Falcóns (Ecco/
HarperCollins, 2019), the debut novel by Melissa Rivero ’08,
a successful lawyer and writer who is also an immigrant. The
Washington Post called Rivero’s book “a beautiful, serious and
life-affirming book,” and the New York Times interviewed her in
the spring. This fall, the book won the 2019 New American Voices
Award, given by the Institute for Immigration Research. The award
recognizes a novel that “illuminates the complexity of human
experience as told by immigrants.” It was also on the long list for
the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
Rivero wrote her critically acclaimed book after hearing about
an incident that happened to her mother in the early years of their
life in the United States. She worked on the novel for more than
six years—stealing time to write after her two children were asleep
or during her commute to work as the assistant general counsel
at Boxed, an online seller of discounted bulk items. The result
of her hard work was an incredibly moving story with insightful
commentary on the current political climate.
The Affairs of the Falcóns tells the story of Ana, an
undocumented Peruvian immigrant living with her husband and
two children in 1990s New York City. After Ana’s husband loses his
job at a meatpacking plant, the family is left living in a single room
in a cousin’s apartment in Queens. As Ana’s unceasing factory
shifts become the family’s sole form of financial security, her
struggles to keep her family together become a tale of resilience.
Rivero’s own story is also one of resilience. Born in Lima, Peru,
she moved to Brooklyn when she was very young and still lives
there today—now with her husband and their two sons. After living
as an undocumented immigrant for most of her childhood, she
became a U.S. citizen in her early 20s. Then, after graduating from
New York University and Brooklyn Law School, she got a coveted
job as an associate in the corporate law department at Proskauer
Rose. But on her first day of work, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and
the financial crisis began to worsen.
Many of her colleagues and classmates from law school were laid
off. Rivero kept her job, but around the same time, her father started
to lose his battle with cancer. Needing more time to help care for
her father and reassess her career goals, Rivero took advantage of a
one-year opportunity from Proskauer to work on-site at a nonprofit.
Rivero worked at the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she
found incredibly inspiring and sparked her creative ambitions.
After her year at the dance company ended, Rivero pivoted
to in-house work in tech companies and began to seriously
pursue writing.
Her training as a lawyer, she said, has been indispensable to her
success as a novelist. “What I’ve found extremely helpful from my
legal training is the discipline,” she said. “You’re always reading or
writing [in law], and you have to get things done in an efficient and
timely manner. That discipline is what helps me to actually sit down
and write and finish the novel. I certainly feel like Brooklyn Law
School gave me those skills.”
After publishing a successful debut novel while maintaining a
vibrant legal career, Rivero hasn’t abandoned that discipline. She’s
still finding time on the subway and during her children’s naps to
type observations and characters on her phone, knowing all those
moments will eventually become her second novel.
—by Dominick DeGaetano