“The first time Juan Ruiz proposes, I’m eleven years old, skinny and flat chested. I’m half asleep, my frizzy hair has busted out from a rubber band, and my dress is on backwards.” I couldn’t help but smile as the novel opens, picturing eleven year old Ana Cancion. It was hard to smile when at fifteen, Ana is in an arranged marriage with Juan, who is thirty two. She is sent with him to the US by her family with the hopes of “money and papers” and a better life. She didn’t want to go and it was a...

Appreciated this slice-of-live novel about a fifteen-year-old girl, Ana Cancion, who immigrates to the United States with her bully of a husband Juan Ruiz. I most enjoyed the saliency of themes related to gender throughout Dominicana. Angie Cruz shows us with straightforward prose how Ana’s day-to-day suffering stems from the limitations imposed upon her by patriarchy – her lack of choice in marrying Juan, her difficulties securing financial independence, and her limited options for independence...

3.75 stars Review to come

THIS ENTIRE REVIEW MUST BE READ AT YOUR OWN RISKThe pages turned...(view spoiler)[On page 48, Ana Canción gets raped by Juan, the man she's already agreed to marry in order to escape Rafael Trujillo's repressive Dominican Republic for a "better life" in New York City.They get to New York, start a tailoring business, and Ana gets pregnant. Yay. She decides to run away from Juan, but his brother César convinces her to come back, be with him. Some things happen; Juan gets a mistress; Ana's pregnanc...

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2020This is my fifth of the six books on this year's Women's prize shortlist and so far it is a very strong list. I really enjoyed this story, inspired by Cruz's mother, of a Dominican immigrant's first years in New York in the mid 60s as a young bride. Cruz captures the period and the situation very well, and her story is readable and quite moving in places.The heroine Ana is expected by her family to marry Juan, whose family are regarded in the Dominican Repub...

I opened up “Dominicano“ on a plane and for the rest of my trip was transported to 1965 New York City. I experienced the city through the eyes of 15 year old Ana, newly married and separated from her family in the Dominican Republic. Every page felt fresh, vibrant and unpredictable!(Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC.)

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 20203.5In Dominicana, Angie Cruz pays homage to the first generation of Dominican women who immigrated to New York City after Trujillo's assassination in the 1960s. Ana Cancion, the green-eyed beauty of a rural family, is her mother's hope for obtaining papers for a better life for the family in New York. So she convinces her 15-year-old daughter to marry 32-year-old Juan Ruiz, who works in New York and hopes to build a restaurant and apartments in S...

Longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.3.5 Stars!The story is told in the first person by Ana. Ana's world is turned completely upside down when she is virtually forced to marry Juan Ruiz and move to America from the Dominican Republic.When Juan asks Ana to marry him, he is thirty-two, she is fifteen. It is a marriage bereft of love. Both Juan and Ana’s family want something different from the union. Juan is looking to get the land that Ana’s family own, and Ana’s family want to emigr...

I got so engrossed in this novel that I accidentally took too long of a lunch break. And then I got so engrossed again later that night that I almost forgot to leave my house to go hang out with my friend. So yeah, I think you could say I enjoyed this book.Watch my full review: https://youtu.be/E3xnmai3gQk

Four yesss another heart-wrenching, powerful, emotional, shaking you to the cores kind of amazing story about a young woman who learn how to get out of the restraints and earn her own independence stars! Young Ana didn’t know what kind of future she was about to embrace when she left her life in Dominican countryside by accepting Juan’s marriage proposal and moved to NYC in mid-60’s.Finally she realizes that is not only a journey to another continent, city, culture, civilization but that is also...

Dominicana was one of the flattest and most poorly written things I have read in a while.  There was a sort of painful obviousness to the way this entire story was told; if you've read even a single historical fiction novel about immigration, this will offer nothing new or fresh or dynamic.  The whole thing unfolded so predictably that I don't think I experienced a single moment of tension or anxiety while reading.That's mostly down to the fact that Angie Cruz never earned my investment, and I d...

“Dominicana” is loosely based on author Angie Cruz’s mother’s tale. Cruz wanted to tell the story of Dominican immigrants. Her narrator, Ana, is fifteen years old when she’s married off to a thirty-two-year-old Dominican man who resides in the USA. Ana acknowledges that her marriage is bigger than her, that the marriage will shoulder her family’s ability to leave war-torn Dominica Republic. Just before she’s married off, she has her first kiss from her neighborhood boyfriend. Ana is an innocent....

Why I love itby Idra NoveyThe best novels, I find, are books I begin for one reason and end up loving for another. That unpredictability is what makes a novel come alive for me. For many years, I have admired the vitality of Angie Cruz’s writing, and I anticipated that Dominicana would be full of dynamic scenes and fearless candor. What I didn’t expect was how intensely and often I would go on considering the resilience of its mesmerizing protagonist, Ana, after finishing this book.Dominicana ce...

In Dominicana we meet fifteen year old Ana who lives with her family in the countryside of the Dominican Republic. Ana is part of a big a family, with her mother assuming responsibility of the children and the household- hardly taking into consideration her husband's perspective. Growing up in the 1960s a lot of persons thought the best way to "escape" and make a better life is to move to America. Ana gets this "opportunity" when one of the Ruiz brother- Juan proposes to her and makes her prom...