America's Dream

Lyrical [and] haunting América’s liberating epiphany will have readers . . . on their feet and cheering. — Washington PostFrom the award-winning best-selling author of When I Was Puerto Rican América’s Dream explores the ever-shifting definition of what it means to be American and exemplifies the spirit of every immigrant who has dared to realize the American dream.América Gonzalez is a hotel housekeeper on Vieques 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 América. So when América is offered the chance to work as a live-in housekeeper and nanny for a family in Westchester New York she takes it as a sign to finally make the escape she''s been longing for. Yet even as América revels in the comparative luxury of her new life—daring to care about a man other than Correa—she is faced with the disquieting realization that no matter what she does she can never really escape her past.