Being Here

By Jaime P. Espiritu and Jaime Espiritu

A novel about coming to America, alienation, assimilation and the process of becoming an American. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570872902
• ISBN13: 9781570872907
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: Petradome Enterprises
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Today's America and it's people, in revealing subtleties.

Reading this novel is like going into the hearts and minds of millions of immigrants to America in the last two hundred years and feeling what they must have felt, thinking what they must have thought when they first set foot here and began a new life. This book is a very revealing document of the human side of the making of America. Very delicately written with superb treatment of many human sensitivities few writers are able to touch upon, or even fully understand. The author of this novel does, and I hope he continues to share this understanding with us through his writing.

This is a book rich with underlying substance and meaning.

After I read this novel, I could only wish there were more of its kind to be found among a mountain of mediocre works in print nowadays out there. There is so much this book tells which make me stop and think and appreciate who I am and what little I have. Just for being an American. Just for being here, in America. I am re-reading some of the chapters and will probably end up re-reading the whole book, for wanting to get more of a fill of the good scenes and passages.

A book filled with many underlying substance and meaning.

After I read this novel, I could only wish there were more of its kind to be found among a mountain of mediocre works in print nowadays out there. There is so much this book tells which make me stop and think and appreciate who I am, and even what little I have in life. Just for being an American, and just for being here, in America. I am re-reading some of the chapters and will probably end up re-reading the whole book, for wanting to get more of a fill of the good scenes and passages.

A book of many revelations about being an American.

I'm glad I found this book. I will treasure it for as long as I live, and for as long as I am an American. As early as a quarter of the way, around page 85 in Chapter 5, I just had to keep reading this very touching novel. Once it got to me, it wouldn't let go. Or I wouldn't let go. The story appears run-of-the-mill at first for a material of this type -- socio-cultural-ideological; immigrant Americans alongside mainstream society. But when Mr. Espiritu started looking into the hearts and minds of some of these American characters: the economic underclass, the homeless, the confused youth, the broken families of middle America, it began to hit home. It was all of hurting, painful, angering, and yet touching and so very gratifying in that it made me appreciate my being an American, and being in America. If you're feeling down and out and need a lift, read this novel!