MUDDY CUP: A Dominican Family Comes of Age in a New America
The original assignment for Fischkin, a staff writer for Newsday, was a year-long series on an immigrant family in New York City in the 1980s. This compilation of that series is the culmination of a decade-long relationship between the writer (herself the daughter of immigrants) and the Almonte family. The story originates in the Dominican Republic and relates life in the campo through three generations of Almontes. Fischkin narrates the dreams, struggles, and perspectives of each of the Almontes as their family is fragmented and gradually reconsolidated on these shores. She gives an intimate account of immigrant life in contemporary America, with all the bureaucratic quagmires, language barriers, and transformations that are involved. This masterfully woven tale strikes at the heart of the American identity, still as much a process of becoming as it is of being. Recommended for general readers.?Tricia Gray, Miami Univ. Oxford, OhioCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.