A poignant reflection on the experiences of an immigrant to the United States.
An Albanian-born immigrant reflects on his journey to America in this debut memoir.
As detailed in the book’s harrowing opening chapters, Camaj first arrived in America in the 1980s via the trunk of a car. Denied entry into the United States, the author and his twin sister, Drita, traveled from their home in the former Yugoslavia to Mexico. In Tijuana, they joined a distant relative, Luigji, who accompanied them on their journey across the U.S. border into San Diego. “I reluctantly became the last to hop in the trunk of an early 1980’s Chevrolet Monte Carlo,” Camaj writes; “the final sardine to fit in the can.” Told in intimate detail, the narrative chronicles the manifold difficulties encountered by the author and his sister in their quest to relocate to the United States. During their time in Mexico, for instance, the duo did not even know how to speak Spanish or English as they attempted to navigate a journey across the border that involved significant physical and financial risks—a trip to California at the time cost them thousands of dollars, all paid under the table. Sprinkled throughout the book are flashbacks to the author’s life in the Malesia (highlands) region of Albania and Montenegro. (“A rugged geographic region,” he observes. “Malesia matches its people.”) Camaj recalls fond memories spent with family, including working alongside his father on an extended trip to Bosnia in 1979. (His father would tragically die the following year.) He also highlights the religious and ethnic diversity of the Balkans, providing firsthand sociopolitical commentary on the region. When discussing the area’s co-mingling of Christian and Islam faiths, the author notes that “our religion does not define us. Our nationality, Albanian, defines us.”
While the journey to the United States takes center stage, the author is especially adept at chronicling the psychological turmoil of an immigrant. Camaj’s family had lived in the same house and toiled on the same land for as many as 16 generations. He asks himself, “did their legacy, for me and my birthplace, end with my departure—did I sin against them?” This sense of betrayal would continue to haunt the author long after finding success and settling down in the United States. Ultimately, he concludes, it was only by leaving his home country that he was able to keep the legacy and memory of his ancestors alive. (“I could only realize my dreams in my new country,” the author reflects.) While much of the book’s narrative comes from Camaj’s own memories, it is supplemented by the experiences conveyed to him by his parents and other people he encountered along the way. Though the book’s jumbled chronology may at times be a bit disorienting, the author’s engaging writing style sustains reader interest throughout. The project’s authenticity is underscored by Camaj’s decision to use Albanian (and some Turkish and Serbian) terms throughout the text, and the book includes a glossary of non-English words to assist readers. This emphasis on engaging readers is further evidenced by a wealth of family photos.
A poignant reflection on the experiences of an immigrant to the United States.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781963844610
Page Count: 280
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
Great fun.
The second installment of childhood recollections (after Opposite the Cross Keys, 1988) by mystery writer S.T. Haymon, who here evokes a sheltered 12-year-old's further encounters with life's earthier side.
Haymon's 1920's, upper-middle-class childhood revolved typically around school, home, loyal servants, and a pair of doting, well-educated parents—until age 12, when her father died and her mother decided to move to London. Refusing to accompany her, the precocious, comically self-confident Sylvia tried to limit this series of upheavals by insisting on remaining in Norfolk in the care of a favorite teacher—except that at the last minute her headmistress (already a sworn enemy) switched houses, arranging for two maiden schoolteachers to put Sylvia up in their house instead. Sylvia knew that the Misses Gosse and Locke were eccentric. What she didn't know was that the skinny, aggressive history teacher and the teary, puppy-like math professor were lesbians. Nor did she notice as Miss Locke's increasingly desperate infatuation with her began to lead the entire household toward destruction. Amusing characters abound—the gardener, Sylvia's only ally, whose faith in the value of a virgin's tips on the horse races led him to pay her for advice; the dour housekeeper who sang opera and downed bottles of gin; the art teacher's model who bewildered Sylvia with talk of "randy old dykes"; and the spiritual channel who informed her that her daddy was watching everything she did from heaven. Haymon's depiction of herself as an unusually clever, frequently petulant, and thoroughly practical young girl obsessed with filling her stomach while all sorts of passionate fireworks exploded around her evokes an era when secrets still existed and scandals were bursting to happen—and makes for slyly humorous, very British entertainment.
Great fun.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1990
ISBN: 312-04986-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
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