American Street Themes

American Street follows Fabiola, a 16-year-old Haitian American girl. Just before the novel begins, Fabiola and her mother, Manman, passed through customs as they entered the United States—but while Fabiola is a U.S. citizen and was allowed through, Manman isn’t a citizen and so was detained. Over the course of the novel, as Fabiola settles in Detroit with her aunt and cousins, she tries very hard get Manman out of the detention facility…

In Haiti, Fabiola’s mother, Manman, was a mambo, or a priestess of Haitian Vodou. When Manman is detained upon entering the U.S., forcing Fabiola to enter the country and start her new life with her aunt and cousins alone, Fabiola does her best to maintain her spiritual relationships with the lwas (Vodou spirits). Fabiola’s spirituality allows her to see her cousins and peers as human iterations of lwas, interpret things…

Moving to Detroit from Haiti is a shocking, uncomfortable experience for Fabiola—especially because her mother, Manman, is detained and so doesn’t accompany Fabiola to live with Matant Jo and Fabiola’s cousins. Feeling alone and unmoored, Fabiola has to confront the fact that in her cousins’ eyes, she looks too Haitian—while Fabiola’s American-born cousins Pri and Donna look embarrassingly American to her. With these difference, the novel suggests that the quest to find one’s…

Fabiola’s idealized understanding of the United States shatters when she encounters the stark reality of life in Detroit. Fabiola soon learns that Detroit isn’t the vibrant, dignified, free place she thought it was—for her family and others in her neighborhood, life is difficult, violent, and desperate. To some degree, the novel suggests this is the case for immigrants as a whole, but it also implies that the specific brand of violence and desperation that…