RaveThe Nation... a way to confront, work through, and even embrace these dark and unhappy legacies, to find meaning and joy in them ... seeks not only to tell us a story set in \'America\'; it asks us whether there ever was such a place. Breaking Goldberg’s identity into its constituent parts—English- and Spanish-speaking, of Latinx and Jewish ancestry, residing in large cosmopolitan cities and in the suburbs of New England—Goldman’s narrative suggests that America has never been one thing or another, but rather a constantly shifting constellation of socially constructed affiliations, stitched together in memory and experience ... Goldberg is an extremely fluid, knowing narrator. His grasp of Boston and of New York City, particularly the Upper West Side and Brooklyn, is that of an insider. Yet the cool, calm, collected way he moves through and describes these cosmopolitan and urban spaces only makes his revelations about his father’s cruelty all the more unnerving ... Goldman at once explains how trauma is passed on through his parents’ experience of mid-20th-century America and—particularly through his passionate rejection of its American Dream and the violence of American-backed dictatorship—offers an unsparing critique.
