Dominicana

"The first time Juan Ruiz proposes, I'm eleven years old." So begins Angie Cruz's novel Dominicana, and the compulsive first sentence sets the tone for this coming-of-age story about a young Dominican girl immigrating to the US for the sake of her family.

At fifteen, Ana finally agrees to marry Juan, a man twice her age, and move with him to New York, in the hopes of eventually bringing her family over to the US. Set in 1965 — against the backdrop of the Vietnam war, the civil rights movements in the US, and political conflict in the Dominican Republic — Dominicana is a powerful, important story about immigration and the American dream.

Ana is a young girl, alone in a big city in a country whose language she doesn’t speak. She was promised freedom and a future, and instead finds herself living with a short-tempered man who doesn’t let her leave the house on her own. But before long, she finds herself making her first friend — the glamorous Marisela — and someone to rely on — Juan’s kind-hearted brother César. And when Juan is forced to return home to oversee the family business in the midst of the country’s heated political turmoil, a new world opens up for Ana in New York. A world of English classes, starting a side-hustle to make her own money, and getting closer to César. As she finds her feet and the rhythm of New York, does she dare dream of a different life in America?

I’m a fan of books that aren’t afraid to diverge from traditional styles and structures. In Dominicana, no quotation marks are used when people are speaking, and the first-person narrative means that you’re fully immersed in Ana’s internal thoughts. Cruz’s writing is smooth and readable, and the chapters are very short — some only a page or two — making the book a difficult one to put down.

Inspired by the author’s mother, Dominicana is an important immigrant story, focusing on the women that do not often feature in mainstream narratives. I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to more of Angie Cruz’s writing.