Dominicana (2019) by Angie Cruz

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dominicana  (2019)

by Angie Cruz

Audubon Ballroom,  3940 Broadway, New York

Manhattan 34/33

New York: 92/105

   Looks like I miscounted both Manhattan, which is now at 34/33 and the Brooklyn etc area, which is down to 26 from 28.  I was under the impression Dominicana, about a child-bride (15) who is brough from the Dominican Republic as the wife of a Dominican immigrant, was set in Brooklyn or Queens.  If I knew more about New York I would have caught my mistake, since she ends up living across the street from the famous Audubon Ballroom, sight of the Malcolm X assassination.   I was more inclined to read this book as a horror story than any other genre, though it's clear the author has no such intent in mind.  Dominicana is another example of the "dim bulb" narrator problem in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  In seeking to present a complete geographic socio/economic portrait of America, one is forced to read about the legions of citizens with little formal education and limited economic/social success.  Nothing against Ana, who seems almost overly bright considering her situation: brought to the US at 15 with little formal education and literally locked inside her apartment, where she is subject to emotional, mental, physical and sexual abuse on what is essentially a daily basis.

  Clearly, the point is to show Ana as a hero, and she is that, but she is also a young woman who doesn't speak English and is literally locked in her apartment for more or less the entire book.  I'll tell you something else, which is that Dominican men come off extremely poorly in the pages of A Library of America.  Oscar Wao is a sympathetic Dominican but the rest of them are portrayed almost universally as wife-abusing brutes, obsessed with their code of machismo.  I can't believe how matter-of-factly domestic abuse is accepted by the women in these books, and that's speaking as someone who has worked dozens of domestic violence cases in criminal court.  I mean these are novels, not real life, can't there be some hope for these poor women?  

   I listened to Dominicana as an extremely tedious thirteen hour audiobook.  Locked inside the voice of 15 year old Ana, the listener suffers along side her in a most unpleasant fashion- and I'm saying that as someone who is 50 plus novels deep into this type of trauma-lit as a result of this particular project.  If I could do it over I would have read the book.