Dominicana

Own Voice Review for Dominican Rep

TRIGGER WARNINGS
Domestic Abuse, Rape, Colorism, Cheating, use of the ‘r' slur, and Death or a loved one.
If you are triggered by any of these topics please go into this review/book with caution.

Thank you to Dominican Writers Association for sending me a copy in exchange of an honest review.

Dominicana was one of my most anticipated releases. My expectations were so high for this because I'm always on the look out for books by Dominican authors. But after reading and DNF'ing at 50% Angie Cruz's novel “Let it Rain Coffee” I lowered my expectations.

I am giving this book 3.5 stars because while i did really enjoy my time reading it. And I appreciate it for what it was. It just didn't completely do it for me.

I really loved the way Cruz showed the realities of how things were in Dominican Republic in that time. How families would marry off their teenage daughters to older men “for their own good”. The fact that most people who move from DR to the US thinking life will be so easy when they're in America. Moving to America isn't a ticket to riches and the easy life. Cruz writes about how the situation in Dominican Republic was in that time where kids would walk around with guns to protect themselves. And people got killed for being in the wrong place at he wrong time. She takes Dominican history and interweaves it with fiction so perfectly. I connected with this because i know that a lot of my family went through similar circumstances. I will always look at Dominicana with so much love and appreciation for being a book that I can see a little bit of myself and my crazy family too.

The list of things that made me drop the rating to a 3.5 is small but things that kind of took me out of the story. The colorism in this book jumped out and annoyed me so much. Yes i do understand that at that time lightskinned latinxs were looked as higher than darker skinned. Hell to this day colorism in latinx culture is still a problem. But having to read Juan speak so lowly of blacks and think he's better because he's white passing is so frustrating. Also the use of the r slur to describe someone was so unnecessary. I didn't really find the machismo problematic because its very accurate. Especially for the time period. I mean its still very much alive in today time lets be honest. But its a thing that annoyed me but I just dealed with because of the accuracy.

All in all i really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone that is interested. It gets my Dominican stamp of approval!!