13 Years in America
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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Publisher Description
After moving to the United States in 1998, a young newly-wed spends 13 years chasing the American Dream through crises, economic downturns, divisions, turmoil, and discontent. Torn between a dream she cannot find and a hope she will not abandon, she examines the realities of life in the Land of Opportunity. At once a moving personal story and a sharp look at the death of the American Dream.
Customer Reviews
Bittersweet but beautiful account of the search for fulfilment in modern America
This was the most though-provoking autobiographical account that I have read in a long time. Not only beautifully written in an effortless style, the author brings you hand in hand through her twenties and early thirties as she chronicles how her life unfolds, in a way which could not gave been predicted. A summer job on a Canadian border toll booth leads to a chance encounter with a young American who works for YS customs on the other side. She leads us through their quick marriage and their rejection of their 'planned' lives, which is the stereotypical college - career- mortgage in the suburbs path which is accepted by most similar people without question, and through 13 years of moving through various homes, jobs and challenges in search of happiness, fulfilment and contentment, attempting to avoid being sucked into the modern consumerist world of credit cards and Wall-Mart and instead explore the satisfaction of living 'off system' in a society that makes it difficult to reject the 'norm'. Bittersweet, joyful, thought provoking, the book is impossible to put down, and leads the reader to question the whole ethos of modern western society, which pushes the individual through a lifelong indebted work-borrow-consume model with very little room for personal development and interaction with friends, family and the true beauty if life. Essential reading !