Natasha is desperately trying to keep her family from being deported, after her father, an illegal immigrant got a DUI and attracted the police’s attention. She’s been in the USA since she was six and barely remembers her life back in Jamaica anymore. She’s doing well in school and loves science and technology. She certainly doesn’t believe in love at first sight, or fated mates or fairytale endings. Even after she meets Daniel on a crowded New York street and he insists that they are […]
Great Expectations
In Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee, Casey Han, a Korean American immigrant in New York City, struggles with being an Americanized daughter in a traditional Korean household. Unlike her younger sister, Tina, Casey fights against her parents’ expectations of her. For example, her parents, especially her mother, are devout Christians, but Casey enjoys casual sex and has even had an abortion. And although Casey graduated from Princeton because it was what her parents wanted/expected, she still hasn’t decided what she wants to […]
The saddest book you could ever read going into the Trump administration.
Brooke Hauser follows the goings-on at International High School at Prospect Heights for a school year. International High School accepts recent immigrants with or without documentation. Their admissions requirements are that they must be recent immigrants (I want to say within a year?) and they have to take an English test and fail. It roughly follows about 10-20 students of varying nationalities and a few teachers. The year she follows is at the very beginning of the Obama administration and it’s truly heartbreaking to juxtapose […]
Lake Holly Could Be My Town
Through NetGalley, I got an ARC of the third mystery novel featuring Jimmy Vega, a New York homicide detective. However, I decided to track down the debut story and that’s what led me to the novel, Land of Careful Shadows. Like most mysteries, this story starts when a body is found. The body of a young Latina woman is found by the river in Lake Holly, about 50 miles north of New York City. Jimmy Vega, a detective from the county is sent to help, […]