Against My Dreams: An Immigrant's Story

by Linda Strever

These engaging narrative poems are written in the voice of the author’s grandmother, Gunnhild Olavsdatter Breland, daughter of a man who refuses to believe the earth is round. Born in 1894 in a tiny farm district in the mountains of southern Norway, she follows her older sister to America in 1913, settling in New York City, a remarkable contrast to the landscape of her childhood. Gunnhild knows no English and has about a year of schooling, gained when the schoolmaster made his annual rounds carrying the schoolbooks on his back. An exploration of an immigrant’s life that spans the Twentieth Century, this is a piece of the American story. It’s also the story of a particular woman, marginalized by gender, national origin, mental illness and social class, who weaves folktale and Old Country wisdom with her own unique practicality and hard-won truth.

124 pages, Paperback

First published August 23, 2013

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense collection of poems that layer across time and across the sea to tell of the imagined internal life of the author's Norwegian grandmother. The combination of family lore, folklore, and fact make for a charming combination. I found the strongest poems to be the ones tied to the grandmother's sisters and mother: the Marit poems that begin the collection; the later, shorter, more lively Ingeborg poems, especially "Eulogy for Ingeborg"; sister Gunnvor "In My Father's House" and her mother in "The Yule Chair". The only criticism I have is that perhaps the collection could have done with more editing, not so much within individual poems as more broadly across the collection. It might have made a tighter tale with a handful fewer poems, or with the poems divided into more sections it might have allowed for more breath and reflection. A worthy read for anyone contemplating their own roots.