Book: Dominicana
Author: Angie Cruz
Country: Dominican Republic
Format: Audio
Narrator: Coral Peña
Length: 10h
Publication: 2019
I’m seriously thinking about starting a new category on books about immigrants because it looks like that’s all I read. 😅 (Update: I did, it’s here)
As you can guess, Dominicana is a story about a teenage girl who moves from the Dominican Republic to New York in the 60s to live with her new husband. Although she’s only 15, she gets married to Juan Ruiz, a guy much older than her, in a move her parents made to try to guarantee that the whole family can eventually immigrate as well.
“Don’t forget about us. No lights are too bright to forget where you come from. Remember. Remember.”
Dominicana
Ana, the main character, evolves a lot during the story. In the beginning, she’s divided between the fear and apprehension of starting her life beside an older man she barely knows and the illusion of a princess life in America. Needless to say life as an illegal immigrant in New York is not all flowers, despite the fact that her husband is not in a bad financial situation.
While Ana struggles to fit in and deal with her controlling husband, history is unfolding around them, both in the United States and in the Dominican Republic. In New York, Malcolm X is assassinated a few blocks from where she lives. In her home country, civil war erupts, after a democratically elected president is deposed with the support of the United States (that was a well-known script for the time, and Brazil and Chile suffered similar fates).
“I look at my feet. I hold back my tears, slump my shoulders, and retreat just enough to show deference. I have learned a lot from growing up with animals.”
Dominicana
Focusing on trying to gain a bit of independence and find support among the few people she meets in New York, Ana doesn’t have the space to worry about politics, but Juan goes back to the Dominican Republic to try to save his business. The months-long trip leaves Ana with the house and the days just for herself and the space to create a life in the United States without the control of her husband. But soon she’ll have to make a choice between her heart’s desires and her family obligations.
In the end, we’re left with a much more mature Ana, capable of making her own decisions and hardened by the New York life.
Nevertheless, I still wished that some of her attitudes toward her husband changed more. But I think that in the end, we can’t escape the limits of the character. This is, after all, a teenage girl from rural Dominican Republic who finds herself dragged to a huge foreign city in the 1960s.
“To be angry and not have the power to control your life. To not feel safe. To depend on a person who reminds you how they can hurt you, even kill you, at their whim. I understand.”
Dominicana
Immigrant stories have a special place in my heart. It’s hard to understand the earth-shaking experience of leaving everyone you’ve ever known behind to start a new life in a place that is completely strange to you.
Even though, I think immigrant stories like this and Pachinko, for instance, rely too much on the myth of the hard-working immigrant family defying all odds. Not all immigrants are like that. Some get lost, and it takes years for them to find their way back to a solid version of themselves.
Love this book? You can pick up a copy at Bookshop.org.
Every purchase supports indie bookstores and helps me keep “Read the World” running.
Leave a Reply