Boundaries

"Elizabeth Nunez is one of the finest and most necessary voices in contemporary American and Caribbean fiction."--Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin "Elizabeth Nunez has written a book so searing, so astute, so immediate to our times, it resurrects; it disrupts inevitably; it startles complacency; and over and over again, it invites healing to flourish.--Patricia Powell, author of The Fullness of Everything In an age of reality TV, a husband and wife cling to Victorian notions of privacy, though doing so threatens the life of the wife. Their daughter Anna yearns for her mother's unguarded affection, and eventually learns there is value in restraint. But Anna, a Caribbean American immigrant, finds that lesson harder to accept when, eager to assimilate in her new country, she discovers that a gap yawns between her and American-born citizens. The head of a specialized imprint at a major publishing house, Anna is soon challenged for her position by an ambitious upstart who accuses her of not really understanding American culture, particularly African American culture. Her job at stake, Anna turns for advice to her boyfriend Paul, a Caribbean American himself, who attempts to convince her that immigrants must accept limitations on their freedom in America. Told in spare and transcendent prose, Boundariesis a riveting immigrant story, a fascinating look into the world of contemporary book publishing, a beautiful extension of the exploration of family dynamics that began in Nunez's previous novel Anna In-Between, and a heartwarming love story. Elizabeth Nunezis the award-winning author of seven novels. Her most recent, Anna In-Between, was a New York TimesEditors' Choice and was selected for the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. She is a distinguished professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches writing and fiction.