Her passion for literature fueled her desire to be active in community. She graduated from the NYU, MFA program in 1999. Soon after, she gave up her fashionista lifestyle to become a full-time college student at SUNY Binghamton where her love affair with literature and history began. In 1993, four of her children stories were featured on BET's Story Porch.

During those four years of college, she worked as a salesperson, manager and then window designer in an upscale Madison Ave. She went to La Guardia High School concentrating on Visual Arts and by default decided to follow a path in Fashion Design at Fashion Institute of Technology. She continued to travel to and from, every summer, until she was sixteen years old. When Juan returns, Ana must decide once again between her heart and her duty to her family.Īngie Cruz was conceived in Dominican Republic and born in 1972 in New York City's Washington Heights. Suddenly, Ana is free to take English lessons at a local church, lie on the beach at Coney Island, see a movie at Radio City Music Hall, go dancing with Cesar, and imagine the possibility of a different kind of life in America. But at the bus terminal, she is stopped by Cesar, Juan’s free-spirited younger brother, who convinces her to stay.Īs the Dominican Republic slides into political turmoil, Juan returns to protect his family’s assets, leaving Cesar to take care of Ana. Lonely and miserable, Ana hatches a reckless plan to escape. So on New Year’s Day, 1965, Ana leaves behind everything she knows and becomes Ana Ruiz, a wife confined to a cold six-floor walk-up in Washington Heights.

Their marriage is an opportunity for her entire close-knit family to eventually immigrate. It doesn’t matter that he is twice her age, that there is no love between them.

But when Juan Ruiz proposes and promises to take her to New York City, she has to say yes. Fifteen-year-old Ana Cancion never dreamed of moving to America, the way the girls she grew up with in the Dominican countryside did.

Dominicana book review