The Immigrant's American Dream: A Reading of Patricia Engel's Infinite Country

The award-winning Columbian-American author Patricia Engel's works like The Veins of the Ocean (2016), It's Not Love, It's Just Paris (2013), Vida (2010) are mostly based on the plight of the Columbian migrants and diaspora, about the life that they live before and after migration. Her recent work Infinite Country (2021) is a slim novel about a family separated because the father was deported back to Colombia. This makes the family live in two different countries, the father along with the youngest daughter live in Colombia with the daughter's grandmother, and the mother lives with the two oldest children in America. They are divided not just by their physical location, but there is an emotional separation. The present paper aims to study how this family remained a family throughout their journey across time and borders even after being constantly challenged. The decision to leave one's home country and live in the new country makes the nuanced life of a migrant difficult as they deal with the haunting thoughts of the life that they've left behind with doubt, regret, longing, and profound homesickness. This paper is an attempt to analyze how the author addresses the popular stereotype of the immigrant coming to the U.S. just to fulfill their American Dream and never looking back.