Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang

I read this book in two days. Qian Julie Wang captured my heart with her beautifully written memoir of growing up as an undocumented immigrant. I was heartbroken by the racism and disconcern that left her family in dire poverty.

Her parents were educated professionals in China, her mother a math professor and her father an English literature professor. In America, they worked as menial laborers. In China, Qian was a fearless, intelligent, tomboy. In America, her teacher accused her of plagiarism, unable to accept her gift with words.

Qian's father had believed in the myth of American freedom. In China, he was punished for independent thinking. He left his wife and child for America, and it was years before they could join him. 

Fear of being discovered kept them caged in poverty. When Qian's mother gains a degree, she can\'t work without proper paperwork. 

Qian did not see the 'beautiful' country for a long time. The trauma of her childhood haunted her. When her family relocates to Canada, their lives improve. They were welcome. They had free health care and found appropriate work. Qian received a good education that prepared her for Swarthmore College and Yale Law School.

As a girl, Qian found solace in books. "I read until my loneliness dulled, and I felt myself to be in the good company of all my vibrantly colored, two-dimensional friends. I read until excitement replaced hopelessness," she writes. She bristled when a teacher pushed her to read 'boy' books as more 'worthwhile' than the stories of girl's lives. She found role models such as Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who taught her that you did not have to be a white male to succeed.

Their family trauma began in China during the Cultural Revolution when her father was a small child who observed his brother arrested, his parents beaten. At school, he was berated and tormented.

"Half a century and a migration across the world later, it would take therapy's slow and arduous unraveling for me to see that the thread of trauma was woven into every fiber of my family, my childhood," Qian writes.

Qian dreams of a day when all people are treated humanely. She writes so others know they are not alone and they can also survive and even flourish. I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. 

Beautiful Country 

by Qian Julie Wang
Doubleday Books

Pub Date September 7, 2021
ISBN: 9780385547215
hard cover $28.95 (USD)

from the publisher

An incandescent and heartrending memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts readers in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world.

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country.” Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.

In Chinatown, Qian’s parents work in sweatshops and sushi factories. Instead of laughing at her jokes or watching her sing and dance, they fight constantly. Qian goes to school hungry, where she teaches herself English through library books, her only source of comfort. At home, Qian's headstrong and resilient Ma Ma ignores her own pain until she's unable to stand, too afraid of the cost and attention a hospital visit might bring. And yet, young Qian, now acting as her mother's nurse, her family's translator, a student and a worker, cannot ask for help. The number-one rule in America still stands: To be noticed is to risk losing everything.

Searing and unforgettable, Beautiful Country is an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light

Ofrendas: Celebrating El Dia De Muertos at the DIA

Ofrendas: Celebrating El Dia De Muertos is on exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art until November 10, 2019. I was unprepared for what I would find when I entered this exhibit. I was immediately moved by the first display and the tears continued to well in my eyes throughout the exhibit.

The first display was in memory of the 43 students who went missing.

 Learn more about this tragedy here and about the missing here.

 

 The Border included a teddy bear in a cage.

 This altar was for the artist Robert Wilbert.

Samples of his art are included.
This tree includes Mexicans who left their mark on the world.

This haunting contribution addresses the unknown migrants who died on their journey.

 This heartbreaking map includes known deaths in the borderlands.

Courage is for the refugees displaced by violence, poverty, and human rights violations.

 Grandparents Know It All

Read about this display, below, for a doctor here.

The dark room made it hard to take good photographs and I only shared some of the 16 displays. This is art at its most powerful. This is art that can move us and educate us and allow us to understand the greater human experience.

Fri, Oct 13, 2017 — Sun, Nov 12, 2017In celebration of Dia de Muertos, the Detroit Institute of Arts, in partnership with Detroit's Mexican Consulate, invite you to explore a community exhibition of ofrenda altars. In Mexico, and other Latin American countries, the Day of the Dead is the time of the year to celebrate the lives of close relatives, friends or community members who have passed away. Objects important to lost loved ones, such as favorites foods, drinks, mementos and pictures, are collected and incorporated into elaborate displays that include pan de muerto (bread of the dead), sugar skulls, candles, flowers, papel picado (paper cutouts) and other decorations. Ofrendas: Celebrating el Día de Muertos will be on view during regular museum hours and are included with general museum admission.

Books on Women Searching for Healing and Justice

Sometimes I find myself reading books simultaneously with themes that reinforce each other. These past weeks I read The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story by Aaron Bobrow-Strain and Legacy: Trauma, Story and Indigenous Healing by Suzanne Methot. Both books feature the stories of women who experienced trauma and struggled with CPTSD. 

Aida's story illuminates the immigrant experience at our Southern borders and the vulnerability of women who seek permanent and legal immigrant status in the United States. Suzanne tells her story in the context of generations of First People whose social, cultural, and religious traditions were broken under colonization and the removal of children to residential schools where they underwent abuse. 

Both books touched me in many ways. I empathized with the women. They endured the unimaginable and survived. I was educated in the history and ongoing policies that destroy traditional native cultures and leads to generations of damaged individuals. Most of all I was angered by ongoing racism and misogyny and the withholding of justice.

The House on Mango Street changed Aida Hernandez's life. In her darkest hours, she remembered the words of hope: "I have gone a long way to come back."

Aida wanted to dance. She wanted to finish high school and go to college. She wanted to become a therapist. She wanted to give her son a good home. She wanted to love and be loved. Her hopes were just like yours and mine.

But Aida's life held more horrors than any one body should be able to endure. She had survived even death but suffered from crippling CPTSD--Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She came from a legacy of abuse but a knife attack tipped her over the edge. It only took one mistake, a $6 mistake, to remove Aida from her son and family, locked up for months in a women's prison. They were not given tampons, or enough toilet paper, or adequate wholesome food. There were not enough beds or blankets to keep warm. 

And that is when Aida saw The House on Mango Street on the prison library shelf and it started her reclamation and a life of helping the other women with her.

Aaron Bobrow-Strain's book The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez brings to life unforgettable women, and through their stories, explores the failure of Prevention Through Deterrence which posits that if the journey is horrific enough people will not come. Women suffer the most in this system. 

He shows how American economic and political policies and the desire for cheap labor created the influx of illegal immigrants. 

Immigrants in detention centers are treated like hardened criminals with shackles, solitary confinement, lack of medical care, meager inedible food, and a scarcity of hygiene supplies. They have no legal rights. They are provided no legal counsel. Border Patrol and detention centers have created jobs and business--paid for by the government. 

Who are the people seeking refuge in America? What drives them from their homeland? What options are available for legal immigration? What happens to those who are apprehended? This book will answer all your questions. But you may not like the answers.

Justice. How many times have we forgotten this value? 

The proceeds from this book will be shared between Aida Hernandez, the Chiricahua Community Health Centers to support emergency services for people dealing with domestic violence or sexual assault, and the author to offset costs of writing the book. Which for me means an instant add to my "to buy" list.

Click here to read an interview with the author at Borderlands-Works in Progress. 

I thank the publisher who provided a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story

by Aaron Bobrow-Strain

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Pub Date 16 Apr 2019

ISBN 9780374191979

PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Suzanne Methot's Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing combines her personal story with history and psychology to create an understanding of the consequences of colonization. She demonstrates how abuse and CPTSD creates a cycle that impacts generations. On the personal level, she documents her own legacy of abuse and dysfunction and how a return to traditional ways brought healing. On the universal, she explains the psychological damage of trauma through story, with summary charts at chapter ends.

Methot's book is perhaps more suited for the indigenous population or educators those in the helping professions who work with indigenous people. But I also found her insights applicable in many ways. I found myself thinking about women I have known who demonstrated the characteristics she describes. And I even found myself applying her insights to characters in novels I have read! 

from the publisher:

Five hundred years of colonization have taken an incalculable toll on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas: substance use disorders and shockingly high rates of depression, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions brought on by genocide and colonial control. With passionate logic and chillingly clear prose, author and educator Suzanne Methot uses history, human development, and her own and others’ stories to trace the roots of Indigenous cultural dislocation and community breakdown in an original and provocative examination of the long-term effects of colonization. But all is not lost. Methot also shows how we can come back from this with Indigenous ways of knowing lighting the way.

I thank ECW for providing a free ebook in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing

Methot, Suzanne

ECW Press

$24.95 CAD

DESCRIPTION

Published: March 2019

ISBN: 9781770414259

Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy in the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell About It

In Adrift, Brian Murphy recounts the journey of the packet ship John Rutledge from its navigation down the Mersey River to the ice fields that sank four ships in 1856. Nearly 1,000 souls died in three months, with commercial losses in the millions of dollars. The Irish immigrants and crew on board the Rutledge were all lost, save one man. This is his story.

I love a good adventure story, and if there are ships and ice involved, I'm all in. I was also interested in reading Brian Murphy's Adrift because it is about Irish immigrants, who in 1856 had scrimped and saved for their passage, hopeful they would find a better life in America. My own Irish ancestors left their homeland for England, a much shorter sea journey. But the reasons for leaving their homeland would have been the same, as well as their poverty.

The book is based on the story of Thomas Nye, a New Bedford maritime sailor who was twenty-two when he shipped on the packet ship John Rutledge out of Liverpool. The ship carried over 100 Irish passengers, bound for New York. 

In 1903, just two years before his death, a journalist interviewed Nye who told the story of the sinking of the Rutledge, his nine days asea watching the other survivors succumb to the elements and dehydration, and his providential rescue.

Murphy takes us on Nye's journey, recreating the events, drawing from Nye's writings, ships logs, and newspaper accounts. We are there when the ship strikes a berg and during the launching of the lifeboats. We experience Nye watching as his fellow passengers in an open board are driven to desperate measures and die until only he is left.

It is a tale of harrowing adventure, but also a study of human nature in desperate circumstances when conventional morality and social norms are washed away. There is no cannibalism involved, thankfully, for as Murphy shares, sometimes that did happen.

Reforms to improve maritime safety did not advance until the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. (Some things never change: the lives of impoverished immigrant families did not spur safety advances, but the deaths of some of the richest men in the world did.)

As climate change accelerates the calving of Greenland's ice sheet, more icebergs will clog shipping lanes. Today we have communication between ships and ship and shore, and knowledge of where the ice fields are.

Murphy is a journalist with the Washington Post and the author of three books.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived to Tell about It
by Brian Murphy
Da Capo Press
Pub Date 04 Sep 2018
ISBN: 9780306902000
Hardcover $27.00 (USD)

Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin

"My future was a mystery, but at least I was leaving hell forever." from Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi's Somalian parents were nomadic herders of camel and goats. His mother bore battle scars from the large cats she fought while protecting her herd. In 1977, drought left his parents with no option but to go to the city of Mogadishu. His father found work as a manual laborer before he became a successful basketball star. When Abdi was born in 1985, his family was living a comfortable life.

Also in 1977 Somalia and Ethiopia went to war marking the beginning of decades-long military and political instability. Clan warfare arose with warlords ruling Mogadishu.

By the time Abdi was six years old, the city had become a war zone and his family had lost everything had fled the city. Existence became a search for safety, with starvation and the threat of death their constant companions.

Call Me American is Abdi's story of how he survived.

Abdi tells of years of horror and fear yet there is no anger or self-pity in his telling. He and his brother Hassam used their wiles to provide their mother with the necessities of water and a little maize and milk for meals.

When Abdi discovered American movies and music and culture he fell in love with America, and by imitating the culture in the movies became Abdi American. He envisioned a life of personal freedom. He taught himself English and then educated others. He was discovered by NPR's This American Life and he sent them secret dispatches about his life.

After radical Islamists took power, anything Western was outlawed. Abdi was punished if he grew his hair too long and had to hide his boom box and music that once provided entertainment at weddings. His girlfriend had to wear a burka and they could no longer walk the sandy beach hand-in-hand.

Knowing he faced the choice of death or joining the radical Islamic militia, Abdi pursued every option to come to America. The process is complicated and few are accepted. He fled Somalia to join his brother at a Kenyan refugee camp where his brother had gone years before.

Abdi had his NPR contacts and even letters from seven US Senators (including Senator Stabenow and Senator Peters from my home state of Michigan) but was turned down. Miraculously, Abdi was a diversity immigrant lottery winner. The required papers were a struggle to obtain when they existed at all. He had to bribe police, and transport to get to the airport. He was 'adopted' by an American family but had to learn the culture and find employment. After several years Abdi found work as a Somali-English translator and is now in law school.

I read this during the Fourth of July week. I don't think anything else could have impressed on me the privileged and protected life I have enjoyed. America has its problems, and when Abdi wins the green card lottery and completes the complicated process necessary to come to America he sees them first hand.

I am thankful for the personal freedoms I have enjoyed. I have never had to sleep in a dirt hole in the ground for protection or worried that by flushing the toilet soldiers would discover me and force me into the militia. No teacher ever strung me up by the wrists and whipped me. I never dodged bullets to get a bucket of water.

I could go on.

Somalia is one of the countries that Trump included in the immigration ban. Had Abdi not escaped when he did, he would not have been allowed to come to America.

I am here to make America great. I did not come here to take anything. I came here to contribute, and to offer and to give. Abdi Nor Iftin in NPR interview

I won a book from the publisher in a giveaway.

Read an excerpt from the book at
https://www.boston.com/culture/books/2018/06/20/abdi-iftin-call-me-american-book-excerpt

Hear Abdi's report on NPR's This American Life
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/560/abdi-and-the-golden-ticket

Stories of The Immigrant Journey

In Journeys: An American Story, seventy-three contributors from across the American spectrum share the story of their immigrant ancestors, demonstrating the greatness of America's roots in diversity.

The stories are grouped into categories:

The Changers, including Marlo Thomas, Gabrielle Giffords, Cory Booker, and Linda Hills the great-granddaughter of Andrew Carnegie.

The Lovers, including Alan Alda, Deborah Norville, and US Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao.

The Originals with an essay by Ray Halbritter representing the Oneida Indian Nation.

The Rescuers, including Marine Corps officer Zach Iscol and retired police officer Matt Tomasic.

The Seekers, including Dr Mehmet Oz, Rhodes Scholar Ahmed Ahmed, Governor of Rhode Island Gina Raimondo, and US Senator Barbara Boxer.

The Strivers, including Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Cuomo, Professor Joseph Bower of Harvard Business School, US Senator Tim Scott, and Hemings family descendant Ben Freeman..

The Survivors, including oncology nurse Nataliya Denchenko, Prof. Jorge Dominguez of Harvard, KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky, and Florida congresswoman Stephanie Murphy.

The Trailblazers, including Tony Bennett, Nancy Pelosi, author Lisa Birnbach, first Mainland China trustee of an Ivy League university Prof. Mao Ye, and investment banker and financial historian Eugene Dattel.

The Undocumented, including Dr. Richard Uscher Levine, Harvard student Erick Meza, and garment worker Helen Polychronopoulos.

The Institutions, including the American Ballet Theater, Monticello, and UJA/Catholic Charities.

The authors contend that the image of the American 'melting pot' should be replaced by the concept of a mosaic, "tiles of different colors and shapes indistinguishable from afar but quite distinctive the closer you get. A mosaic is only as good as its grout...used to bind and fit between the distinct stones...and hold it in place."

40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by  immigrants or their children, including AT&T, Procter & Gamble, US Steel, DuPont, Craft, International Paper, Nordstrom, and more recently Goggle, eBay, GE, IBM, McDonald's, and Apple.

The stories are inspirational and uplifting, and will make readers consider their own immigrant roots and the social, political, and economic factors that inspired them to leave their homeland.

All profits from the sale of this book will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.

People are invited to share their family journey at www.journeysamericanstory.com

I found this book interesting on several levels: as a composite of American experience, a political statement, and, as a family genealogy researcher, as family history.

My own immigrant family history includes stories of fleeing persecution, seeking religious freedom, and hoping for a better life.

My Gochenour Swiss Brethren ancestors sought religious freedom, moving across Europe before settling in the Shenandoah Valley by 1742. My Becker ancestors were Baptist German Russians who fled increasing hostility against German nationalists in Russia--and to avoid being recalled into the Czar's army. My Ramer ancestor was a Palatine German who fled the continual warfare that decimated their homeland, settling in Pennsylvania, and then fought in the Revolutionary War. And my Greenwood great-grandparents left Britain a hundred years ago, my great-grandfather wanting a better life than working in a mine or the cotton mills of Lancashire.

What is your family journey?

I received a free ebook from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Journeys: An American Story
by Andrew Tisch, Mary Skafidas
Publication Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 9781948122016, 1948122014
Hardcover $27.99 USD

from the publisher:

Every family has a story of how they arrived in America, whether it was only a few months, years, decades, or centuries ago. Journeys: An American Story celebrates the vastness and variety of immigration tales in America, featuring seventy-three essays about the different ways we got here. This is a collection of family lore, some that has been passed down through generations, and some that is being created right now.

Journeys: An American Story captures the quintessential idea of the American dream. The individuals in this book are only a part of the brilliant mosaic of people who came to this country and made it what it is today. Read about a Governor’s grandfathers who dug ditches and cleaned sewers, laying the groundwork for a budding nation; how a future cabinet secretary crossed the ocean at age eleven on a cargo ship; about a young boy who fled violence in Budapest to become one of the most celebrated players of American football; the girl who escaped persecution to become the first Vietnamese American woman ever elected to the US congress; or the limo driver whose family took a seventy-year detour before finally arriving at his original destination, along with many other fascinating tales of extraordinary and everyday Americans.

In association with the New-York Historical Society, Andrew Tisch and Mary Skafidas have reached out to a variety of notable figures to contribute an enlightening and unique account of their family’s immigration story. All profits will be donated to the New-York Historical Society and the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation.

Featuring Essays by:
Alan Alda
Arlene Alda
Tony Bennett
Cory Booker
Michael Bloomberg
Barbara Boxer
Elaine Chao
Andrew Cuomo
Ray Halbritter
Jon Huntsman
Wes Moore
Stephanie Murphy
Deborah Norville
Dr. Oz
Nancy Pelosi
Gina Raimondo
Tim Scott
Jane Swift
Marlo Thomas
And many more!

Patriot Number One, Fighting Chinese Corruption

Journalist Lauren Hilgers was covering a story of Chinese villagers protesting the land-grab by local authorities and demanding democratic rights when she met Zhuang Lienog, son of a fisherman and tea shop owner. When the corrupt local government decided to crack down on protesters, Zhuang and his wife managed to leave China for Flushing, NY to join a community of Chinese immigrants.

Journalist Lauren Hilgers was covering a story of Chinese villagers protesting the land-grab by local authorities and demanding democratic rights when she met Zhuang Lienog, son of a fisherman and tea shop owner. When the corrupt local government decided to crack down on protesters, Zhuang and his wife managed to leave China for Flushing, NY to join a community of Chinese immigrants.

Zhuang's story as the activist Patriot Number One and his continuing activist work in America reveals a great deal about the situation in China. At the same time, readers learn about the challenges of immigrant life, finding work and adapting to a new world. Readers get to know Zhuang and his wife Little Yan, their friends and neighbors.

As Zhuang continues his protests in America, his Chinese family is targeted as a way of silencing him. Zhuang's commitment to his home village and for democracy truly makes him Patriot Number One.

I enjoyed the insight into modern China and the plight of immigrants. The author keeps a journalist's objectivity. This is not a fault, but the story may feel flat to readers used to more emotional bias.

Read an author interview at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/540901/patriot-number-one-by-lauren-hilgers/9780451496133/

Patriot Number One
by Lauren Hilgers
Crown
Publication March 20, 2018
$27 hardcover
ISBN 9780451496133

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran

"They had wanted to love. They had gone too far."

Parental love, it's obsessive envelopment and fierceness, is the theme of Shanthi Sekaran's moving and thoughtful novel Lucky Boy. I loved the writing, the characters are sympathetic and real, the story heartbreaking.

Kavya and Rishi Reddy have spent their savings on fertility treatments. While investigating adoption they are sidetracked into foster parenting, with hopes of adoption of their foster child.

Solimar Castro Valdez is determined to leave her impoverished Mexican village to find a better life in America. Her journey is harrowing and terrifying, but for Checo, the young man who protects her and with whom she conceives a child. Soli finds her place in Berkeley, CA working for a troubled family that also tries to care for her. Soli's love for Ignatius, her Nacho, is her home, her reason for existence.

When Soli is found to be an undocumented alien she is separated from her son and interned in a series of horrific prisons where she is brutalized and dehumanized. Meanwhile, her son has been welcomed into the Reddy home, newly christened Iggy by Kavya who has fallen deeply in love with the child.

The battle for this lucky boy takes the Reddys and Soli on a journey fraught with dangers, the most dangerous being broken by the loss of one beloved child.

Sekaran's writing is amazing. Her insight into her characters and human nature is spot-on, imparted to the reader in beautiful and insightful language. Anyone who has known couples struggling to conceive, who have turned to adoption, will recognize the Reddy's difficult and emotional journey. I applaud the author for tackling the divisive and politically explosive issue of immigrants and immigrant rights, creating a character who gives a face to the unnamed masses who by any means come to America dreaming of a better life and the ability to improve the lives of family left behind. The descriptions of detention centers, the justice system, and the prejudice encountered will enlighten readers to realities behind the headlines.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Lucky Boy
Shanthi Sekaran
Putman
Publication Date: January 10, 2017
$27 hard cover
ISBN: 9781101982242

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

I was thrilled to win Behold the Dreamers on Goodreads Giveaways! After reading it, I am grateful to have won it. It is a beautifully written, deep, and thoughtful exploration of the oldest theme in American literature: The American Dream. What makes this treatment stand out is the jutaposition of the dreamers who hope to achieve the dream against the family who already lives the dream.

Jende and Neni have come to New York City hoping for a better life. Neni is a strong willed woman who defied her father to marry Jende. She is determined to get an education and a career. When Neni became pregnant her father had Jende imprisoned. In 2007, now together and living in Harlem, Neni is in school and Jende has landed a posh job as a chauffeur to a Lehman Brothers executive. They are full of hope for the future. All they need is to become permanent residents.

Jende's boss Clark and his wife Cindy are successful, rich, beautiful people, who have come up from the lower and middle classes. In truth Clark is a workaholic whose moral sense must be supressed as he conforms to the business ethics of Lehmans, while Cindy obsesses over fitting in, passing as one of the 1% to maintain her status.

As the two couples struggle with their personal demons, watching their dreams unravel, choices are made that will alter their lives forever.

I enjoyed this book on so many levels. Mbue is a wonderful story teller, her characters are vivid and unforgetable. The treatment of  the immigrant experience and American immigration law is relevent and revealing.

I loved how Jende and Neni were hard working idealists about America. The battle between Clark's Midwest values and the realities of Wall Street destroy him while his wife escapes into the oblivion of drugs and alcohol. Cindy and Clark's son Vince understands the spiritual death of American society, dropping out to find a life worth living. I loved the ending as Jende and Clark meet a final time, no longer boss and servant, but as men recognizing their mutual struggle to do what is best for their families.

It impressed me that Mbue, born in Cameroon and living in America for ten years, has a masterful writing style and a deep and intelligent insight into the psyche of both immigrant and American. This is her first book, and I can't wait to read more from Mbue.

I received a free book from Random House in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
Random House
$28 hard cover
ISBN:9780812998481