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by Yasmine Charles (Author)
The American dream is defined as a "set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity, success, and upward social mobility". For many black migrants, that journey upward often tags along trauma, family separation, and humiliation. The Cost of the American Dream Diary of a Homeless Soul is a memoir about a US military woman from Haïti who struggles to find her voice, purpose, identity, and place in the world, in the midst of family dysfunction, displacement, deportation, abuse, abandonment, bad relationships, and perplexity in her new country. This book, which chronicles the author's trips and deployments around the world, has been writing itself for nineteen years. The Cost of the American Dream! is the military version of Julia Roberts's Eat Pray Love. However, unlike Ms. Roberts's character, she falls in love with the wrong man in the chapter, Sin City.
In her memoir, Yasmine strips herself of religious restrictions and expectations, giving voice to her issues, pain, vulnerabilities, and deepest desires to help us understand how every human soul can experience emotional homelessness at some point in life. She also helps us understand that our traumas are often generational. Therefore, it is not our responsibility to carry them for the rest of our lives. This book also gives a behind-the-scenes look at life in the military from a female perspective and highlights the biggest challenges veterans face when they come home. This author's story of courage is a perfect example of how faith, belief, and resilience can take us from the pit to the palace, no matter where we come from.
Yasmine Charles is a native of Haiti, a US Navy veteran, a trained chef, a Norfolk State University alumna, and a former schoolteacher. She's been featured on PBS for a Women's History Month documentary. As an educator in food and nutrition, she inspires others to have a better relationship with food. As an author, she empowers motherless and fatherless daughters around the world to rise above cultural tradition, the condition of their births, find their voices, and rewrite their own legacies. When Yasmine's not in the kitchen cooking, you'll find her advocating for Haitian migrants and for homeless veterans. She enjoys hot yoga, the arts, and running outdoors.
