Swimming To Yaphank And Back

Book excerpt: This memoir is an intimate personal portrait of a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, and artist. It is also an engaging chronicle of ethnic, New York, and American history. Whether they're about poverty or wealth, sickness or health, or family troubles or romance, Anita's stories will resonate with many readers who grew up in immigrant families that both embraced mainstream American life, and differed from it. From beginning to end, the questions of identity and relationship that Anita grapples with highlight familiar push-pull tensions in the struggle for success, personal independence and self-fulfillment.