Friday, May 22, 2009

Cinderella School: The New Yorker

Cinderella School: The New Yorker

I first read this about three years ago. I still think about it from time to time. The experience of the new immigrants, supposedly skilled immigrants who "hadn’t come to the U.S. for survival, [but] had come for success."

One scene I cannot forget is:
Vadim and I still walked to the train together on Monday mornings, and Vadim still waved to me from the opposite platform, but some days I could barely make myself wave back. I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. In the morning hours, there were just one or two people waiting on my side of the station. Almost all the commuters stood on the other side, with Vadim. They were going up the line, into the city, to work at real jobs. I was going down the line, to sell the Cinderella dream and a laxative hyped as a magic potion. More than once, I thought I saw something like pity in Vadim’s expression.
When I first read this, I did not pay much attention to Dr. Solomon, which I should have.

Someone posted the full article when it was available from the official website. Read it while you can

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