I go to America

by Joy K. Lintelman

"Near the end of her life, Mina Anderson wrote a lively, intimate memoir, a piece so interesting and informative that renowned Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg used it to shape the central female character of his beloved emigrant novels. But Moberg's archetypical Swedish settler "Kristina" is lonely and depressed, constantly yearning for her homeland." "Mina's story was quite different." "Showcasing this previously untranslated memoir, I Go to America traces Mina's trip across the Atlantic to Wisconsin and then to the Twin Cities, where she worked as a domestic servant. It explores her move to rural Mille Lacs County, where she and her husband worked a farm, raised seven children, and contributed widely to rural Swedish community life through her poetry, fiction, and letters to Swedish American newspapers." "Unlike Moberg's Kristina, Mina herself writes about how grateful she was for the opportunity to be in America, where her pay was better, class differences were unconfining, and chil