Finding the Truth in Immigrant Fiction: A Review of Angie Cruz's "Dominicana"

By: Justin Edmund Watkins

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Angie Cruz’s Dominicana is a story inspired by many real-life Dominican women who helped the author create a realistic book by allowing her a glimpse into their personal immigrant stories.

“This novel was inspired by my mother’s story,” Cruz explains in the acknowledgments, “as well as all the Dominicanas who took the time to answer my questions about their lives and who opened their photo albums so I could bridge the gaps in all the silences in the telling, often painful.”

The novel’s protagonist, Ana Canción, embodies these images and varied stories. A poor Dominican girl from the countryside, she has known little besides her family’s small village and their life there.

Mostly removed from the tumultuous happenings in La Capital, Santo Domingo in the 1960s, Ana’s mother has big plans for her to marry Juan Ruiz, a much older man who can take her to New York City.

Once Ana is in the United States, she is supposed to help support her family back on the island and eventually bring them to the U.S. as well. In New York, Ana is subjected to physical abuse at the hands of her husband, who controls her new life in the U.S., as she learns how to play the role of a wife.

Although only a teenager and an expectant mother, during her husband’s absence to defend his business interests in the Dominican Republic, Ana learns how to survive and use her assets to entrepreneurial advantage.

The main and most poignant point of Dominicana is that even though it is a story of a young Dominican immigrant in the 1960s, Ana’s story is timeless and can ring true for countless women. The novelist in this case undertook wide-ranging research but rather than produce a work of scholarly nature, she offers an imaginative account that fuses many real-life stories into provocative representative fiction.

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“Juan is my monster and my angel,” Ana reflects regarding her husband. “In this messed-up world, he tries his best. And I owe it to him to try my best.”

This quote is a salient summary of the dual extremes that can characterize relationships in an immigrant’s experience. In the beginning, upon arrival in New York City, Juan has all the power. Ana is powerless. He can do anything he wants to her and take anything he wants from her.

At times he can be extremely cruel, and at times he can be equally sweet and tender. Their relationship is always on his terms. This is how he can simultaneously be her monster and her angel. The author deftly creates a compelling portrait of a young, battered women controlled by a temperamental man. Ana has to learn to navigate her husband’s moods.

The most remarkable aspect of Dominicana is its believability. This is an important aspect of the book because although it is a work of fiction, it almost reads like a personal memoir.

The novel’s details such as the murder of Malcolm X on Ana’s block, the music of the period, 1960s fashion, or the World’s Fair, give this fiction a realistic texture. The wealth of seemingly mundane details renders a highly evocative setting. Readers can vividly imagine what Ana’s experience must have been.

Again, the author’s method of gathering a wealth of information from real-life immigrant women equips her to compose a novel that reads like representative personal history. In this, the utility of writing fiction becomes most apparent. Cruz is able to create a believable world and a remarkable story, without being confined to a particular storyline or to the strictures of accuracy as in a work of nonfiction.

Besides its superb believability, Dominicana’s other defining characteristic is its urgency. As Cruz acknowledges the stories on which she draws are “often painful” in the telling.

Dominicana tells a story that needs to be told, even today. Ana’s story is that of so many other immigrant women and can resonate with many kinds of people.

Whether a reader has experienced a similar story herself or simply wants to try to understand a grim side of the immigrant woman’s experience, Dominicana’s particular kind of representative fiction provides just that: a clear, credible window into that world. It is not merely the story of one woman, but a far broader account of women’s experiences of immigration.