Metal and Plum: A Memoir

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. Soccer balls putter down dusty streets, classmates forage through dumps for toys, while friends carry on inexplicably hopeful conversations in bread lines. This extraordinary memoir captures the essence of cultural dislocation and hope. Guruianu eloquently conveys the impact of immigration on his family, contrasting the hardships of Ceausescu's Romania with the challenges of adaptation to the United States. But in the end it is Guruianu's lyric and earnest voice that hits home in METAL AND PLUM, titled so aptly for its juxtaposing of unlike worlds and how much it hurts the heart when you go home and find that the place you knew is no longer there.