The Fruit of All My Grief Lives in the Shadows of the American Dream

Like the Russian author Svetlana Alexievich, award-winning journalist J. Malcolm Garcia lets the people he writes about speak for themselves. His writing highlights the struggles and the dignity of people quietly fighting for their lives. They include families and small businesses still recovering from the BP oil spill; the man sentenced to life in prison for transporting drugs to pay for the medical care that would save his son’s life; the widows of soldiers who died, not in war, but from toxic fumes they were exposed to at their bases overseas; the Iraqi interpreter who was promised American asylum, only to arrive and be forced to live in poverty. The soaring narratives told in The Fruit of All My Grief let us feel the fears, hopes, and outrage of those living in the shadows of the American Dream.

J. Malcolm Garcia is the author of The Khaarijee: A Chronicle of Friendship and War in Kabul (Beacon 2009), What Wars Leave Behind: The Faceless and the Forgotten (University of Missouri Press 2014), Without a Country: The Untold Story of America’s Deported Veterans (Skyhorse Press 2017), and Riding through Katrina with the Red Baron’s Ghost: A Memoir of Friendship, Family and a Life Writing Stories (Skyhorse Press 2018). Garcia is a recipient of the Studs Terkel Prize for writing about the working classes and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism. His work has been anthologized in Best American Travel Writing, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Best American Essays.