Sale!

Immigrant Dreams

Immigrant Dreams is a memoir — the story of one immigrant’s journey in 1950 from postwar Germany to the United States. Born in 1936 under Hitler’s regime, Barbara’s earliest years are shaped by WWII and its atrocities. Five postwar years later, she immigrates to the USA as a teenager where her American dream begins to take shape.

Other formats

$19.99

Description

Immigrant Dreams is a memoir — the story of one immigrant’s journey in 1950 from postwar Germany to the United States. Born in 1936 under Hitler’s regime, Barbara’s earliest years are shaped by the Second World War and its atrocities. Five postwar years later, she immigrates to the United States as a teenager where her American dream begins to take shape. Believing that education is as necessary as bread, she searches for a way to attend a university. As her skill in her newly adopted language improves, the dream expands to include a writing career as a poet and a creative writer. Like the immigrant relatives who came before her, Barbara is willing to work hard physically and mentally so as to grasp every opportunity that may be offered. Realizing her dream will take ambition, determination, stamina — and, as the author recounts in this stirring tale — a good deal of luck.

About the Author

Barbara Goldowsky has written fiction, poems, and nonfiction articles that have been published by regional and national journals and newspapers. Born in Germany, Barbara came to the United States in 1950 with her mother and her younger brother. The family settled in Chicago, Illinois, where Barbara attended public schools and junior college, majoring in English and journalism. Awarded a scholarship designated for a “deserving foreign-born student,” she studied at the University of Chicago, majoring in political science and receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in June 1958. At the University of Chicago, fascinated by American literature and creative writing, she joined the staff of the literary magazine, the Chicago Review, just as American literature was being transformed by the Beat poets and writers. After years devoted to marriage and child-raising, Barbara’s writing career began in the early 1980s when she was living in the Hamptons. In 1985, she became a freelance contributor to the Southampton Press, writing articles about the arts, and reviews of books, music, theater. She produced and hosted radio programs that featured interviews with writers and poets for the radio station of Long Island University’s Southampton Campus (now Stony Brook Southampton). In 1989 Barbara helped to found Pianofest in the Hamptons and remained associated with the festival, serving first as general manager and then as publicity and publications manager. In 2016, Barbara moved to her present home in Lasell Village, in Newton, Massachusetts. She considers herself a fortunate immigrant because she was able to realize her twin dreams of attaining a world-class education and of becoming a writer in her adopted language.

Interviews

Dream of Consciousness: Barbara Goldowsky’s Timely and Timeless Immigrant Dreams (NewYorkinFrench.net)

 

Additional information

Weight 1.25 lbs
Dimensions 9 × 6 × .9 in

6 reviews for Immigrant Dreams

  1. Becky Kennedy

    Immigrant Dreams is vital, memorable, and wise. An accomplished stylist, Barbara Goldowsky explores, in lively and luminous prose, a personal journey that reaches across languages and cultures. Rendering the delightful, sobering, and always compelling particulars of one immigrant’s passage, Goldowsky accesses the deeper core not only of the immigrant experience but also of the human dream: In this account, the realization of immigrant dreams celebrates resolve, and talent, and inspiration; it also celebrates love.

    -Becky Kennedy, Ph.D

  2. David Lee Rubin

    What first strikes the reader of Immigrant Dreams is its complexity of perspective — age-appropriate, phase by phase, yet subtly focalized through the memory, understanding, emotions, and values of the author-narrator. History is pervasive, of course, but backgrounded to emphasize key personal experiences and their impact, both immediate and life-long. The result is exceptionally engaging and enlightening. Highly recommended.

    -David Lee Rubin, Guggenheim Fellow

    Professor Emeritus of French

    University of Virginia

  3. Victoria Hartman

    Barbara Goldowsky’s exquisite, poetic prose is both daring and satisfying. This vibrant, evocative immigrant tale offers poignant insights into love, loss, and remembrance, revealed with a sharp eye for detail. With its deep resonance of the past, Immigrant Dreams is a book of substance.

    -Victoria Hartman,

    Southampton, New York

  4. Fred Volkmer

    Immigrant Dreams is a fascinating and extraordinary autobiographical story that begins in Hitler’s Germany and ends in the Hamptons. It’s also a triumphant account of the author’s dealing with personal tragedy while emerging as a writer. I loved the book!

    -Fred Volkmer

    Book Reviewer and Music Composer

  5. Kathi Kouguell

    I have just finished your most touching, most interesting and truly spellbinding book. I was able to visualize you through all the difficult, courageous, wonderful and exciting as well fascinating roads you traveled through your life so far. Your courage and determination to take on life on your terms and your love and respect for your mother as well as your brother and the gift of the two very special and gifted men in your life, what can I say but you have my great admiration not only for how you dealt with your life but also how you were able to portray it all in your book.
    Immigrant Dreams indeed!

    -Kathi Kouguell

    NYC Artist

  6. Review Mirror

    The author has quite a story to tell — and she tells it brilliantly. I was not able to put this book down (an experience that I have never before felt with such intensity). Barbara Godowsky is a gifted writer and I was captivated as she unfolds the intimate story of her remarkable life with candor and eloquence.

    Review Mirror

Add a review

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.