C.ara Romero is one of nothe. Mother, sister, neighbor and hard worker: anyone who identifies with one of these conditions could find something of themselves in the story of this woman who he has Dominican origins, lives in the USA and in the midst of his fifties he is looking for a job.
Angie Cruz lives in Pittsburgh, New York and Turin. She writes for several newspapers and directs Aster (ix), a magazine that deals with art and literature. With her and hers novels, she entered the shortlist of numerous awards.
Dear Romero, in all this, she also does something else: she takes us there where she has found the meaning of life. Which isn’t exactly in an office or struggling with wonderful offspring.
She looks for it, and packs it, in the relationships that she embroiders around herself. An admirable cross-stitch that never gives up, even when she arrives (sometimes late) for the appointments provided for by the Professional Retraining Plan, a program that helps her to fix job interviews.
Cara seeks a place in New York after a hurricane swept her life in Hato Mayor: she had a husband who almost killed her and a son who will never return home.
In the meantime though she never stops caring for the people around her knowing that “maybe if we work together we can find a solution to my problem”.
Of his busy days, he reports to the employee (and to us) between dialogues, thoughts, doubtsSpanish and non-Spanish words, running left and right as we follow her curiously through the pages of How not to get lost in a glass of water (Solferino), a book by Angie Cruz, an American writer who shares her family’s Dominican origins with Cara, her fifty years old and a precise idea of how to be in the world.
“How not to get lost in a glass of water” by Angie Cruz (Solferino)
Why did you write this book?
I started it five years ago. Trump had just been elected and many of us had realized that a political and economic crisis was coming to the US. As a writer, I couldn’t ignore issues like the climate crisis, immigrants under attack at the borders. And as Cara Romero does, I began to contemplate the idea of looking for another job. Cara’s character started talking to me and I got stuck listening to her.
The book’s Senior Professional Retraining Plan helps to talk about the topic of employment.
Yes, during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 many programs similar to the one I invented were launched: many in their fifties lost their jobs because so many industries moved abroad. Since then I have wondered how these people fared in life. I don’t know if this problem is more serious today than fifteen years ago but one thing is certain: the state continues to fail.
Not only in the US.
Unfortunately not. I have lived for over ten years in Italy and I am aware that Cara Romero’s story is not very different from that of many Italian women, not just immigrants. Women are not valued enough, it is not enough to praise them, they need support and protection systems for them, if companies really want to grow.
Cara reaches fifty without a job and without a husband. Marriage is no longer a bulwark.
I see more and more women are choosing to redesign the family and this is exciting. Cara may not have a “husband” but she has life partners like her neighbor Lulu. I hope my book manages to communicate just how happiness, satisfaction, and support can come in many forms. I know many women who complain of not having a partner while they have spent a life of loneliness and sadness within their marriage. Unfortunately, mainstream movies, books and art have led us to believe that there is only one way to live. And to love.
Cara has many people who depend on her: two children she accompanies to activities after school, an old woman who leaves her messages every afternoon at 4.45am on the answering machine …
Yes, she does a lot of unpaid jobs but she doesn’t have one that allows her to pay her rent. The former, however, are essential for other families and society as a whole to survive. Many mothers and grandmothers do the same things as if it is not tiring, as if it is not a job, but it is. I wanted to make visible all those submerged activities that are the basis of our well-being. Of our dreams.
Motherhood, by the way, doesn’t seem to be the most important experience for a woman here.
There is a lot of pressure on having children and a lot of criticism for those who choose not to have them. You may not be a mother, yet motherhood wears out most of our lives: even if we don’t care, the rest of the world does. Taking care of someone, however, goes beyond motherhood, it is a practice of radical acceptance of all that we are and want to be.
“American children are traumatized much more easily than us,” it reads.
I have had a lot of differences over my son’s education with my mother. I wanted him to go to progressive schools, I encouraged him to talk about his feelings about him and left him free to choose what to eat, how to dress. I wasn’t raised like that and for a long time I thought mine was the right way. But now I ask myself: who am I to say what is right for everyone and to judge others? Writing this book has made me less judgmental of those who are different from me.
The title is a very popular saying in Italy.
It is also so in the Dominican community. We shouldn’t turn something into a bigger problem than it is, sometimes I forget it.
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