Book description
Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work.
Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first…
Why read it?
2 authors picked How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
As you can tell from my first two choices, I usually go for dark, disturbing fiction.
I love fiction that confronts me with the challenge of making sense of troubling circumstances and putting myself in another’s place, work that’s as complex and difficult as the world we live in. So maybe this novel qualifies in those terms because narrator Cara Romero surely has a lot of problems.
Faced now with unemployment and a job counselor, she has no idea how bureaucracy works and all she can do is answer standardized questions in her own digressive way. Cara’s 100% authentic voice…
Cara Romero’s unique and vibrant voice stayed with me long after I finished the book. Like all immigrants, she’s caught between two worlds. She’s bound to the parents she left behind in her native Dominican Republic, and she cares for her family and friends in Washington Heights, New York. She’s a flawed character who grows during the story because, as she explains, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. As a parent, I felt for Cara and her estranged son Fernando, separated by vast cultural differences. This is a heartwarming story, where Cara’s compassionate voice is juxtaposed with the bureaucratic lingo…
From Roxana's list on voices of immigrants.
If you love How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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