*Click here for nationwide events featuring Elizabeth Nunez
* FINALIST for the 2012 NAACP Image Award in Literature!
* Selected for the New York Times Editor's Choice, October 2011
A powerful immigrant story of family, love, assimilation,
and a provocative look inside the contemporary book business.
"Boundaries is told in spare and transcendent prose . . . As always, Nunez delivers a unique and riveting perspective on Caribbean life as well as immigrant life in general."
--The New York Amsterdam News
"Many moments of elegant, overarching insight bind the personal to the collective past."
--New York Times Book Review
"If I wore a hat, I'd tip it to novelist Elizabeth Nunez . . . with Boundaries, her eighth work, the storyteller is in fine form . . . [it] is timely and provocative -- and it's written with such vivid prose that, despite the bittersweet ending, you'll step away from this refreshing take on contemporary publishing with a smile."
--Essence
"In Nunez's latest, the author further explores immigrant life, a life where a hard-working woman can progress up the corporate ladder, buy an apartment in a soon-to-be trendy neighborhood, and still be plagued by outsiderŐs angst . . . A thoughtful literary novel exploring the shadows of cultural identity and the mirage of assimilation."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A quiet, sensitive portrait. . . This work covers a lot of ground, from mother-daughter and male-female relationships to the tensions between immigrants and the American born."
--Library Journal
"This bittersweet, sentimental novel will appeal to readers who've left home to make their path in the world."
--Publishers Weekly
"Nunez deftly dissects the immigrant experience in light of cultural traditions that impact family roles, professional obligations, and romantic opportunities."
--Booklist
"Elizabeth Nunez continues to add to her impressive body of work with her new novel, Boundaries, the moving and spirited story of Caribbean-born Anna Sinclair's efforts to find love and foster a successful career as a book editor, all the while caring for her aging parents. Ms. Nunez has always had the power to get to the essence of what makes human beings take right and wrong turns. With Boundaries, a reader will find that she, again, does not disappoint."
--Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World
"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 inevitability; it startles complacency; and over and over again, it invites healing to flourish."
--Patricia Powell, author of The Fullness of Everything
Praise for Anna In-Between by Elizabeth Nunez:
"A psychologically and emotionally astute family portrait, with dark themes like racism, cancer and the bittersweet longing of the immigrant."
--New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
"Nunez has created a moving and insightful character study while delving into the complexities of identity politics. Highly recommended."
--Library Journal (*starred review*)
"Nunez deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity in her vivid latest . . . with expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader."
--Publishers Weekly (*starred review*)
"Nunez offers an intimate portrait of the unknowable secrets and indelible ties that bind husbands and wives, mothers and daughters."
--Booklist
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, Boundaries is 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 heart-warming love story.
ELIZABETH NUNEZ is the award-winning author of eight novels. Her most recent, Anna In-Between, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was selected for the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award. Her other novels include Prospero's Daughter (2006 Florida Center for the Literary Arts One Book, One Community selection, 2006 Novel of the Year for Black Issues Book Review); and Bruised Hibiscus (American Book Award winner). Nunez was executive producer for the Emmy-nominated TV series Black Writers in America. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches creative writing and fiction. She divides her time between Amityville, New York, and Brooklyn.
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