In the second half of the twentieth century Dominicans became New York City's largest, and poorest, new immigrant group. They toiled in garment factories and small groceries, and as taxi drivers, janitors, hospital workers, and nannies. By 1990, one of every ten Dominicans lived in New York. A Tale of Two Cities tells the fascinating story of this emblematic migration from Latin America to the United States. Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof chronicles not only how New York itself was forever transformed by Dominican settlement but also how Dominicans' lives in New York profoundly affected life in the Dominican Republic. A Tale of Two Cities is unique in offering a simultaneous, richly detailed social and cultural history of two cities bound intimately by migration. It explores how the history of burgeoning shantytowns in Santo Domingo--the capital of a rural country that had endured a century of intense U.S. intervention and was in the throes of a fitful modernization--evolved in an uneven dialogue with the culture and politics of New York's Dominican ethnic enclaves, and vice versa. In doing so it offers a new window on the lopsided history of U.S.-Latin American relations. What emerges is a unique fusion of Caribbean, Latin American, and U.S. history that very much reflects the complex global world we live in today.

The history of women's spirituality and Christian mysticism demonstrates that women have been influential religious leaders even without benefit of priestly ordination and theological training. St. Catherine of Siena and St. Teresa of Avila are examples of women with visionary gifts of tremendous power. A less well-known Spanish visionary is Sor María of Santo Domingo, a Dominican tertiary of peasant lineage who became so famous for her raptures, austerities, and prophecies that the king, a cardinal, and nobles considered her a living saint. In 1948 research in the archives of the University of Zaragoza uncovered The Book of Prayer of Sor María of Santo Domingo (originally published around 1518) which had gone unnoticed for centuries. The text includes some of Sor María's ecstatic utterances and representations, and is a first-hand look at a women who in many ways is as representative of the early years of sixteenth century Spain as St. Teresa was of the later years. Giles' book provides the first English translation of this text as well as a study of Sor María and the issues that pushed her into the limelight.

Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals the way racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class. Engaging and astute, Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today's young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world.

The Saints of Santo Domingo: Dominican Resistance in the Age of Neocolonialism tells the story of a generation of Dominican warriors, who surrendered their energies, and often their lives, in the struggle against devastating poverty, glaring social inequality and state violence. Daniel Shaw, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Eugenio María de Hostos College, recounts the lives of the persecuted leaders of the clandestine FALPO and MPD. Shaw -an internationalist and anti-imperialist leader in the United States- has lived alongside and organized with social movements in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Central America, Brazil and Western Africa. Guided by a profound sense of loss and duty, Shaw seeks to rescue from oblivion the example of Chu, Furi, Claridad and other larger than life Dominican fighters who were assassinated by the neocolonial Dominican state. Among the other themes explored in his timely book are Haitian-Dominican unity, forced migration and the everyday survival of the exiled Dominican community in New York City. The Saints of Santo Domingo is a must read for any student of Dominican history trying to bridge the gap between the murderous regimes of Trujillo and Balaguer, and the present day repression of the popular, anti-imperialist movement.