Anna In-Between
3.5/5
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About this ebook
--New York Times Book Review (Editors Choice)
"Nunez has created a moving and insightful character study while delving into the complexities of identity politics. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal (*starred review*)
"Nunez deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity in her vivid latest . . . with expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader."
--Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)
"Nunez offers an intimate portrait of the unknowable secrets and indelible ties that bind husbands and wives, mothers and daughters."
--Booklist
"The award-winning author of Prospero's Daughter has written a novel more intimate than her usual big-picture work; this moving exploration of immigrant identity has a protagonist caught between race, class and a mothers love."
--Ms. Magazine
"Probing and lyrical, this fantastic novel is one of Nunez's best yet."
--Edwidge Danticat
ANNA IN-BETWEEN is Elizabeth Nunez's finest literary achievement to date. In spare prose, with laserlike attention to every word and the juxtaposition of words to each other, Nunez returns to her themes of emotional alienation, within the context of class and color discrimination, so richly developed in her earlier novels.
Anna, the novel's main character, who has a successful publishing career in the U.S., is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on vacation in the island home of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go to the U.S. for treatment, even though it is, perhaps, her only chance of survival.
Elizabeth Nunez is an award-winning author of seven novels. She is a distinguished professor at Hunter College, CUNY, and divides her time between Amityville, New York, and Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Nunez
Elizabeth Nunez is the award-winning author of eight novels. Both Boundaries and Anna In-Between were New York Times Editors' Choices and Anna In-Between won the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and the 2011 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and Barnes & Noble. Nunez also received a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing.
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Reviews for Anna In-Between
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thirty-nine year old Anna returns to her parents' home in the Caribbean islands. Anna has been in New York City as an in-demand editor for almost eighteen years, returning to her Caribbean home periodically for short visits. She returns, not because of a longing for her country, but only to check in on her aging parents. They appreciate the visits but feel Anna has lost touch with her roots. It is as if Anna cannot wait to bolt from her childhood memories, the color of her mixed-race skin, and her emotional parents.On this particular trip, Anna discovers her mother has advanced stage breast cancer and is appalled her parents have been aware of the growing tumors all along. It is inconceivable they chose not to do anything about the disease growing in Beatrice's breast. With Anna's insistence of medical care ever increasing, Anna's parents finally visit a doctor to begin treating the disease with chemotherapy. Anna's mother, however, draws the line at traveling to the United States for necessary-for-survival surgery, strongly believing her dark skin will warrant sub par treatment. Mother and daughter are locked in a cultural battle; mother accusing daughter of becoming too Americanized as if it were akin to catching a different debilitating disease. Anna In-Between is the dance of expectation. Mothers want so much for their daughters that reality seems like a constant disappointment, an "you can never do anything right" attitude.Beatrice is not entirely to blame in all this. Anna has her assumptions, too. She has so much pent up resentment towards her mother she thinks Beatrice blames her for a failed marriage, is disappointed in Anna's less than impressive career, and is embarrassed by Anna's less than impeccable appearance. It is hard for Anna to empathize; to see Beatrice as human when she feels like such a failure herself. I won't spoil the plot, but I can say Nunez's gift is a satisfactory non-ending with a healthy dose of hope. For Anna and Beatrice.Interestingly enough, Nunez refers to the locale of Anna In-Between as "the island" as if she doesn't want to put a pin the map of where the story actually takes place.