Muddy Cup: A Dominican Family Comes of Age in a New America

by Barbara Fischkin

Book Overview

Traces the challenges faced by four generations of a Dominican family after leaving their poverty-stricken country under the dictator, Trujillo, and arriving in Queens, New York, where the youngest... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684807041
• ISBN13: 9780684807041
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic, sensitive account of different generations of a Dominican family.

I'm an Anglo American whose daughter has taught in the Dominican Republic for 5 years. I have visited 3 times and I'm an avid reader of Dominican history, culture, and I especially love a good novel. Muddy Cup is by far the best novel I have read. It paints a descriptive and sensitive portrait of the different generations of one family, showing those who chose to remain in their homeland, and others who sacrificed to come to the U.S. I enjoyed how the author shared her feelings about her new friendships and relationships with the different generations of the Dominican family. Anyone who wants to know more of the Dominican culture should read this novel. I was sad to finish the last page, wanting to read more.

Fantastic storytelling about the Almonte family...

I just finished reading "Muddy Cup" and feel like I know the Almonte family personally. That could be because I'm familiar with the Dominican experience, my wife emigrated from Santo Domingo at age 16, and I also grew up in the predominantly Dominican Washington Heights neighborhhod. But even if I didn't, the book is so detailed and intimate that someone who has never met a Dominican will feel like they truly have. Barbara Fischkin set out to do a piece for New York Newsday on the Almonte family. The Almontes are from a very small village, known as el campo, called Camu outside of Puerto Plata. She met the mother, Roselia, and her three children( Cristian, Elizabeth and Mauricio ) at the US consulate in Santo Domingo. That newspaper piece ended up as the book "Muddy Cup." Mrs. Fischkin became close with the family, including many relatives, and followed their journey from the small village to Santo Domingo and eventually to Queens, NY. The Almonte story is like many other Dominican families who came before and after them. The youngest child, Mauricio, who is know studying to be Spanish professor in Tennessee of all places, is the child who I could relate to the most. He didn't speak a word of English when he arrived in Queens at age 11, and now is a very educated, English professor in the making. That is amazing to me because the Dominicans, like many other immigrant groups get sterotyped all the time. They are all uneducated drug dealers, or the ones who "made it" are all baseball players. Like the Irish in the last century were all called potato eating, job stealing parasites. Dominicans happen to be the largest( if they are not they are almost there ) Hispanic group in NYC. They have made their presence felt all over the Northeast and beyond, and althougn this book was written in the early/mid nineties, it reflects Dominican experience of today. More have arrived and are arriving every day. Guillermo Linares was elected the first Dominican City ouncilman back in 1991 and many others are entering politics as well. Mrs. Fischkin did a fantastic job of telling their story and it just so happens that her family, Ukranian Jewish immigrants almost a century before, took the same journey as the Almontes. The only difference is that they traveled across the ocean on a boat, while the Almontes traveled on an airplane. I have read quite a few stories about Dominican immigrants and this is by far the best and most heartfelt. I look foward to reading more of Barbara Fischkins work as it is apparent that she is a gifted and entertaining writer.

An engrossing and important story

Barbara Fischkin tells a universal story in her chronicle of the Almonte family's coming to America, the painful choices and formidable obstacles they face, their setbacks and successes as they leave behind their beloved Dominican Republic. Muddy Cup is full of rich detail, compassion, and a narrative focus that makes it read like a novel. Treating a little-covered topic with depth and insight, this is the way journalism should be done. There are more than one million Dominicans living in the United States, and Fischkin does a wonderful job of giving faces and names to a group of people who are increasingly visible and vocal in this country. Most important, she shows how similar their hopes and dreams are to those of the many immigrant groups who made America.

Best book on modern immigration

This is the story of everyman, the struggle of stepping off into uncharted universe to make a better life. As the US continues to attract record numbers of immigrants, this book provides a seamless look at just who these people are, the conditions they left behind and their expectations for the future. It also reminds us that the experiences of today's immigrants are not unique, that they are a mirror for all of us.