Publisher's Synopsis
"A probing tale of an exile's quest for a new self, Approaching Freedom follows Maria Nodarse's journey from her arrival as a Cuban political refugee in 1960s America to her return to her native land in 1979. Nodarse is fifteen when her family settles in a white middle-class New Jersey town. In Cuba she had attended the same private American school since kindergarten. At Ridgefield Park High School, from the moment she's instructed to take part in the pledge of allegiance, Nodarse is overwhelmed by a sense of alienation. When her classmates ask her, "Do you wear shoes in Cuba?", and she's forbidden to speak her own language on the school grounds, she starts looking for somewhere to hide. Alone in this new reality, with one brother studying medicine in Mexico and the other imprisoned after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Nodarse resents the role assigned to Cuban women. When her father loses his job and announces that "we're all moving to Miami"
