THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 28, 1996 TAG: 9607300516
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GREG MORAGO, THE HARTFORD COURANT
LENGTH: 66 lines
AMERICA'S DREAM
ESMERALDA SANTIAGO
HarperCollins. 325 pp. $23.
America Gonzalez lives in a small house in Puerto Rico.
See America put on maid's uniform.
See America clean toilets in hotel for white tourists.
See America's abusive lover Correa slap and punch poor America.
Correa is a very bad man.
See America leave Puerto Rico to escape Correa's beatings.
See America run.
Run America. Run.
Nobody ever told America Gonzalez that problems aren't solved by running away from them. But it's a lesson she learns the hard way in Esmeralda Santiago's passionate first novel, America's Dream.
To hang an entire novel on such a simple adage seems both naive and foolhardy. But Santiago, the author of the well-received memoir When I Was Puerto Rican, is an excellent storyteller and fills the simple outline with incredible humor and unbearable pain.
Despite the wry observations about the differences between working-class Hispanics and upper-class whites, this is not a story about culture clashes. Santiago has crafted a poignant tale that celebrates the human spirit and the triumph of will.
The book opens on a desperate note as America learns that her 14-year-old daughter Rosalinda has run away from home with her teen-age boyfriend. America gets the bad news from her mother, Ester; both women work as chambermaids at La Casa del Frances, a hotel on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques popular with ``yanqui'' tourists.
America, wild with anger and fear, is sure that Rosalinda has repeated what seems to be the legacy of the women in her family: getting pregnant at 14 and being deserted by the bum who got you that way. Despite her best judgment, America turns to her own bum, Correa, Rosalinda's errant father. A ``suavecito'' who works on the same island, Correa shares America's bed when he feels like it, but mostly he beats her.
Thankfully, Rosalinda is not pregnant but persuades Correa to allow her to live with other relatives while she sorts out her immature life. America is powerless to stop Correa from taking her daughter, and a failure at trying to solve Rosalinda's emotional turmoil with motherly care.
With the wounds of a particularly savage beating still coloring her face, America is befriended by a New York couple, the Leveretts, who are vacationing at the hotel with their two small children. The Leveretts eventually ask America to become their housekeeper at their Westchester, N.Y., home. At her mother's prompting, America seizes the opportunity for a new life. She arrives in New York intent on making it on her own. With a ``tia,'' an aunt, who lives in the Bronx with her own extended family to befriend her, America is not without support in her brave new world.
It is in her descriptions of Latino families juxtaposed against the Leveretts' conspicuous consumption (Karen Leverett pays more for panty and bra sets than America makes in a week) that Santiago is at her most clever.
Ultimately, Correa locates America with vengeance masked as undying love. America's Dream reaches its powerful conclusion in scenes that depict a different kind of American dream. For some that dream may be a new home and a shiny car. For America, it is simply life. by CNB