Title: America's dream
First published: 1996
Description: America Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on an island off the coast of Puerto Rico, cleaning up after wealthy foreigners who don't look her In the eye. Her alcoholic mother resents her; her married boyfriend, Correa, beats her; and their fourteen-year-old daughter thinks life would be better anywhere but with America. So when America is offered the chance to work as alive-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester County, New York, she takes it as a sign that a door to escape has been opened. Yet even as America revels in the comparative luxury of her new life, daring to care about a man other than Correa, she is faced with dramatic proof that no matter what she does, she can't get away from her past.
Subjects: Fiction, Puerto Rican women, Mothers and daughters, Women domestics, Women, Literature, Fiction, general, Mothers and daughters, fiction, New york (n.y.), fiction, Women household employees
Places: Puerto Rico, New York (State), Westchester County, Westchester County (N.Y.), United States