Dominicana by Angie Cruz

Dominicana by Angie Cruz is the story of Ana, who is forced to marry so that she can live in the US, hopefully to prosper and send money home to the Dominican Republic. Eventually, she plans to sponsor family members who also want to become American. She is 15, her husband is 32 when they hastily marry and move to New York.

In New York, Ana finds that her husband is not the wealthy man he pretended to be. Nor is he as kind as everyone thought. In fact, this book needs a trigger warning for domestic violence. Finding herself trapped in poor circumstances, Ana comes up with sneaky ways to set money aside for herself. Ana works hard at making her home comfortable, cooking delicious foods from their home country, and helping him with a shady business out of their apartment. But, when she makes a costly mistake, will it end her chance to escape from his violence?

Recommended - I enjoyed Dominicana mostly for the work ethic and creativity of the heroine, but I also loved the way she got to know her neighbors (in spite of the language barrier), found a way to start learning English when her husband was not around to force her to stay home, and eventually made her own money. She screwed up plenty, mostly because of her youth and naïvité. But, I cared for her and hoped things would work out. The 1960s setting was unfortunately not well described. I had to keep reminding myself of the time period.

It's been a couple weeks since I read Dominicana but I remember it well. I found it very difficult to put down and since we were being hit by the outer bands of Hurricane Hanna, it was a great day to read. Hanna even cooled us off enough that I was able to spend part of my reading time outside. In July! Yay!

I think I have Instagram to thank for this recommendation. I remember seeing it frequently, not so long ago. Maybe it was a Book of the Month Club selection? At any rate, I read lots of reviews and I'm glad I was able to read a copy. The story is based on the author's mother's story. I'm curious how similar it is and in what aspects she departed from her mother's experience.


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Goodbye, Sweet Girl by Kelly Sundberg

It started out well. He was kind, solicitous, emotional, affectionate. He seemed to love her like nobody else ever had. There were things about him that concerned her, like the way he let a friend behave around her, but nothing to indicate he would ever do her harm. She was pregnant and he was happy about it. So, they married.

And, then the abuse began. It began with something that sounds harmless enough. He threw a shoebox at her. A shoebox, empty, doesn't weigh much and can't do much damage, right? But, abuse escalates. The longer they stayed married, the worse the abuse became -- until she had to wear long sleeves to cover the bruises on her arms and couldn't explain the bruising on her face and the cut lip.

Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a memoir that begins with the moment Kelly Sundberg realized she had to get out of her abusive marriage to save herself and her son. It starts with a harrowing scene in which she managed to escape their apartment inside a college dormitory where they worked as the resident parents. Only the people who worked in the dorm were present, but it was the first time she'd thought only of saving herself long enough to give away the fact that she was being abused.

Sundberg returns to the beginning of her story to tell about how they met, the times when his behavior may have been a warning that she missed, how they married after she discovered she was pregnant and he became abusive shortly after their marriage, the abuse slowly escalating, the injuries becoming worse.

Recommended - Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a rough read but an important one because the author does a terrific job of showing how abuse can start out seeming like nothing at all. Throwing a shoebox? It sounds perfectly harmless, right? But, there's a pattern to abuse. It becomes more dangerous, harder to run away, more likely to end in death. That's exactly what happened to the author; it slowly escalated until the dorm incident (which got them thrown out of their apartment). Even as she was in the process of divorce, her father was skeptical and her employer tried to fire her. Why is it that women are punished for being abused? Fortunately, she stood up for herself and managed to keep from being fired while her husband remained employed.

Goodbye, Sweet Girl is very well written, incidentally. It's been a long time since I've read a memoir about domestic abuse but I don't recall the writing itself ever really standing out. Kelly Sundberg is an excellent writer.

©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.