This profile of Dominican Americans closes a critical gap in information about the accomplishments of one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States. Beginning with a look at the historical background and the roots of native Dominicans, this book then carries the reader through the age-old romance of U.S. and Dominican relations. With great detail and clarity, the authors explain why the Dominicans left their land and came to the United States. The book includes discussions of education, health issues, drugs and violence, the visual and performing arts, popular music, faith, food, gender, and race. Most important, this book assesses how Dominicans have adapted to America, and highlights their losses and gains. The work concludes with an evaluation of Dominicans' achievements since their arrival as a group three decades ago and shows how they envision their continued participation in American life. Biographical profiles of many notable Dominican Americans such as artists, sports greats, musicians, lawyers, novelists, actors, and activists, highlight the text. The authors have created a novel book as they are the first to examine Dominicans as an ethnic minority in the United States and highlight the community's trials and tribulations as it faces the challenge of survival in a economically competitive, politically complex, and culturally diverse society. Students and interested readers will be engaged by the economic and political ties that have attached Americans to Dominicans and Dominicans to Americans for approximately 150 years. While massive immigration of Dominicans to the United States began in the 1960s, a history of previous contact between the two nations has enabled the development of Dominicans as a significant component of the U.S. population. Readers will also understand the political and economic causes of Dominican emigration and the active role the United States government had in stimulating Dominican immigration to the United States. This book traces the advances of Dominicans toward political empowerment and summarizes the cultural expressions, the survival strategies, and the overall adaptation of Dominicans to American life.

The first of its kind, this book presents an introductory profile of Dominicans as an ethnic minority in the United States.

This study of the political, economic, and sociocultural relationship between the Dominican Republic and the United States follows its evolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the mid-1990s. It deals with the interplay of these dimensions from each country's perspective and in both private and public interactions. From the U.S. viewpoint, important issues include interpretation of the rise and fall of the Dominican Republic's strategic importance, the legacy of military intervention and occupation, the problem of Dominican dictatorship and instability, and vacillating U.S. efforts to "democratize" the country. From the Dominican perspective, the essential themes involve foreign policies adopted from a position of relative weakness, ambivalent love-hate views toward the United States, emphasis on economic interests and the movement of Dominicans between the two countries, international political isolation, the adversarial relationship with neighboring Haiti, and the legacy of dictatorship and the uneven evolution of a Dominican-style democratic system. The Dominican Republic and the United States is the eleventh book in The United States and the Americas series, volumes suitable for classroom use.

Jasminne Mendez writes about her childhood in this memoir about identity as she ultimately assumes aspects of both her parents' culture and society at large to become Dominican American.

This volume forms part of the Latino Communities, Emerging Voices Political, Social, Cultural and Legal Issues series. This study explores the diverse struggles of incorporation pursued by immigrants from the Dominican Republic to one city in the United States- New York City. The Dominican Republic, the second largest country of the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, was the nation that sent the most immigrants to New York City during the 1980s and 1990s. This study chronicles the lives of Dominicans in New York City: their difficulties, their courage, and their boldness to incorporate themselves into American politics.

An innovative historical and ethnographic examination of Dominican identity formation in the Dominican Republic and the United States.

Provides information on the history of the Dominican Republic and on the customs, language, religion, and experiences of Dominican Americans.