Not a single day passes without immigration being front and center in the news. Stories of immigrant experiences, whether they took place last year, or in years past, remain relevant and refreshed continually by the traumas and triumphs of immigrants striving to shape a new, American identity.
Learning to Speak American is not just an immigrant story, it is a coming-of-age tale, a classic American success story. Annette and her brother, the now world renowned architect, Daniel Libeskind, grew up in a world turned upside down by WWII. Faced with new tongue twisting languages, alien cultures, new relationships and a daily effort to survive, both triumphed in a way neither they, nor their parents, could have expected given the bleak beginning.
Annette achieved something unheard of till today: she entered the nationally acclaimed Bronx High School of Science in New York, days after her arrival, without knowing any English and without taking the mandatory entrance exam.
Learning to Speak American provides adventures a plenty: secrets, religious questioning, a robbery, a death in the family, a near drowning, first love, and most of all, the emotional turmoil of survival in alien worlds and separation from a beloved father.