In My American Girls, we see an up close account of what life is like for the Ortiz family, a Dominican family that now lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Ortiz home is overrun with family members and friends who are constantly coming and going. In the street, all of the kids on the block come out to play with each other. There is a strong sense of community that exists between the Dominicans of this neighborhood that extends beyond direct familial relationships. The entire community, especially those who weren’t born here, is struggling to find work, to make a living, to get an education, and to learn English. This community, which exists separately from other communities in Sunset Park (such as the Asian community), has both its advantages and disadvantages for the Ortiz family.
Coming together as a community creates a huge sense of comfort for the Ortiz family, especially for the elders. They help each other to learn about life in the U.S., to immigrate here, and to find work here. In the film, for example, we see the mother teaching an English phrase to one of her many family members. Learning from family is probably less intimidating than learning from strangers. Once they get adjusted to life here, they’re able to send money back to their poor families at home in the D.R. Besides for these practical reasons, they also get to hold on to memories of home by constantly sharing them with each other. They strongly hold onto their culture and their traditions while they are living here. This perhaps relieves the scary fact that they are living in a completely alien land.
While the benefits of living in a close knit Dominican community are real, there are also setbacks, especially those that affect the Ortiz daughters. We constantly see the middle daughter struggling with school, and one of the reasons is because neither of her parents can help her with her work. Generally, the large amount of family members and friends that are constantly around makes for a huge distraction. The younger daughters would rather socialize within their community than study. They’ve even complained several times that they’d rather move back to the D.R. and stay there. This was the opposite for the oldest daughter, who worked extremely hard to study and do well in school. She graduated from a prestigious university, but she still finds herself being held back in some ways by the demands of her family and the community. There is a feeling that she could be more successful of she could severe her ties with her family and her community. For the daughters especially, we see the members of this community stuck in an awkward place that is somewhere between belonging to the U.S. and belonging to the D.R. As long as they are in limbo like this, they can never go very far in either direction.
