Book Review: Contented among Strangers: Rural German-Speaking Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest

with the first chapter. The third chapter introduces Cuban immigrants to the United States, but they are an incidental byproduct of Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain. Cuba's independence under U.S. influence and near control establishes the basis for subsequent waves of primarily white and upper-class sojourners who integrate nearly as well into the U.S. economy as they do to Cuba's. The post-1959 mass immigration again is explained primarily and properly as initiated by U.S. foreign policy toward the Castro Revolution. Compared to other accounts of Cuban immigration, relatively little attention is given to the Cuban communities in the United States. General statements based upon a close reading of the literature offer approximate characterizations but little intimate detail. The portrayal fits well into contemporary transnational emphases on the links between sending and receiving countries. The authors demonstrate the complex and critical ties that have linked the United States and colonial and postcolonial Cuba for centuries. They indicate how variations have produced distinct waves of exiles, immigrants, and sojourners, each with distinct race and class profiles. They do not, however, furnish a compelling account of the lives of Cuban Americans in the United States.