Historical literature and current affairs continue to examine the legacy of the ‘dirty wars’ upon various Central American and Caribbean peoples, from the trial of Efraín Ríos Montt for genocidal policies against Maya Ixil peoples in Guatemala to the truces of Honduran and Salvadorean gangs that originated in Los Angeles. For Latin Americanists, these transnational populations lie at the centre of both contemporary analyses and emerging trends in the historiography. In Banished to the Homeland, David Brotherton and Luis Barrios provide an excellent discussion of another group of transnational people whose history is still being charted: Dominican deportees caught over the last few decades between the United States and the Dominican Republic.

For decades, numerous Dominicans have obtained legal residence in the United States, escaped political upheaval and violence, and pursued the ‘American dream’. From the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act through the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act to the 2001 Patriot Act, increasingly restrictive policies derived from immigration reform, the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on terror’ have deported thousands to the Dominican Republic, primarily for drug-related offences. At processing and sentencing, the prosecutors and the judges tell the Dominican that he is returning to his ‘home’ (the majority of respondents in the study were male). However, in the so-called country of origin, the deportee explains that his family brought him as a child to the United States. He laments, ‘I was born here [in the Dominican Republic] but I really don't remember anything from here’ (p. 53). With a transnational methodology based upon interviews with 98 deportees, Brotherton and Barrios restore the life stories and struggles of those seen as statistics and numbers by immigration officials and policies.

The first two chapters provide an excellent introduction into the historiography, methodology and theory of the ‘deportee’ to prepare those less familiar with sociology, transnational studies or Dominican history. The next two chapters outline what the authors describe as a process of ‘social bulimia’ in which Dominicans, with the support of transnational networks of family and friends, arrive in the United States to obtain the ‘American dream’. While establishing homes and families, many Dominicans face structural factors and economic dilemmas contributing to their decision to engage in the ‘culture of drugs.’ Chapters 6 and 7 bring the reader into the prisons and the deportation hearings. Here, courts and immigration policies ‘regurgitate’ and ‘expel’ these Dominicans. The authors’ use of ‘social bulimia’ to explain the lure of the ‘American dream’ and the subsequent expulsion from the United States to the Dominican Republic is especially apt, for these displaced persons are branded as criminals and deviants upon arriving in the Dominican Republic.

Chapters 8 to 10 focus on the deportees’ experiences in the Dominican Republic and in Dominican prison. Throughout, the deportees examined by Brotherton and Barrios epitomise the struggles of countless other transnational subjects caught between borders and boundaries. The stigma of deportation, crime and failure to achieve the ‘American dream’ remains with these ‘Dominicanyorks’. Although the authors miss an opportunity to delve a little deeper into how these persons are identified (What is ‘Dominican’? What is ‘American’?), this is more than made up for by chapter 11's account of 18 deportees who returned to the United States. In both the Dominican Republic and the United States, the deportees continue to pursue the ‘American dream’ and rebuild their families and homes.

Truly admirable is the authors’ desire to encourage future research on exiles and deportees who manoeuvre between the Caribbean Basin and the United States. As any Dominican historian will testify, the topic of ‘exile’ occupies an integral part of the nation's history, epitomised by Juan Bosch, Ángel Miolán and all those who struggled against or fled the Trujillo and Balaguer dictatorships. Finally, their discussion of these deportees fits very well with scholarship on other transnational peoples, such as those from Mexico and the Caribbean by Leo Chavez and Aviva Chomsky, and would serve well as a text in a class on Latin American, US–Latin American or immigration history. In fact, the authors’ willingness to share raw interviews and field notes, such as a deportation hearing beginning on p. 164, provides invaluable resources that connect our students to those who testify, upon arriving in the Dominican Republic, ‘We're Americanized’ (p. 228) or ‘They're tough on Americans here’ (p. 198). By turning our attention to those deported under contemporary immigration and anti-terrorism policies, Brotherton and Barrios prove how transnational methodologies restore the experiences of these previously overlooked peoples who are still defining the idea of ‘America’, as well as ‘the Dominican Republic’.