Review by Booklist Review
Cara Romero, a Dominican immigrant who lives in Washington Heights, loses her job when the factory where she has worked for most of her adult life closes and moves to Costa Rica. On a hot tip from her friend, Cara enrolls in an Obama-era senior workforce program, which involves regular meetings with a counselor to determine her eligibility for extended unemployment benefits and other jobs. Over 12 sessions, Cruz (Dominicana, 2019) channels Cara's warm voice, brimming with lively Dominican diction, as she responds to the counselor's unreported queries, clashing with the dry application forms Cruz intersperses between the session notes. Throughout, Cara meanders through stories that bring to life her friends Lulu and la Vieja Caridad and her estranged son and husband, whose violence precipitated her flight from the Dominican Republic. Here, too, is her correspondence with the psychic Alicia. Although a little rough around the edges, Cara shines as a caring friend and a survivor thanks to support systems that transcend family ties.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cruz (Dominicana) returns with a wry story of the Latinx community in New York City's gentrifying Washington Heights in the late 2000s. Cara Romero, a single woman in her 50s, is unexpectedly jobless after the factory where she worked shuts down. The state's Senior Workforce Program provides her with meager benefits in exchange for attending weekly meetings with a job counselor. During the sessions, Cara's monologues range widely, addressing her history of abuse, heartache, and affairs. She knows she has a tendency to get off topic ("When someone asks me about mangoes I talk about yuca," Cara tells the counselor). Cruz intersperses the sessions with Cara's questionnaires, job skill tests, and eviction notices, all underscoring the unjustness and absurdity of the economic shifts that have upended the lives of Cara and her neighbors. Cruz expertly avoids idealizing her indomitable protagonist into a flat victim, although not much of a plot emerges from the monologues--sometimes Cara just prattles on. However, readers who persist through the occasional narrative snag will be rewarded with a tender and quintessentially American portrait. Agent: Dara Hyde, Hill Nadell Literary. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
After decades at the local lamp factory, Cara Romero has lost her job in the Great Recession, and she's meeting with a job counselor. Instead of talking about work, though, she spends 12 sessions spilling forth her story of wild love affairs, close but querulous relations with neighbor Lulu and sister Angela, her financial struggles and frustration with gentrification, and her heart-rasping estrangement from son Fernando. With a 100,000-copy first printing; from the author most recently of Dominicana, a Women's Prize finalist and a Good Morning America Book Club pick.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Dominican woman in her mid-50s living in Washington Heights must find a job while facing the forces of gentrification, globalization, and the Great Recession. It's 2009, and while "El Obama" works to piece together a shattered economy, Cara Romero, at age 56, must find a job of her own. She's been unemployed for two years, since the factory where she worked for most of her life in the United States moved abroad. As part of a Senior Workforce Program in New York, she sits down with a city employee, a younger Dominican American woman, for 12 sessions during which they will work together to find Cara a job that matches her skills and interests. Throughout the sessions, with wit and warmth, author Cruz explores Cara's upbringing in the Dominican Republic, journey to the United States, estrangement from her only child, relationship to her sister and extended family, and commitment to her Washington Heights community. The potency of Cara's first-person voice as she speaks to the job counselor is undeniable, including some delicious multilingual turns of phrase. Cruz intersperses the 12 sessions with documents like rent notices from Cara's building and job application materials she must complete, including a "Career Skills Matcher," all of which work together to demonstrate both the power of bureaucracy to complicate a person's life and the ability of paperwork to tell one version of a person's story while often hiding what makes a life truly rich. A poignant portrait of one fallible, wise woman and a corner of one of New York's most vibrant immigrant communities. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
