Emma Violand-Sánchez knew little English when she arrived in Virginia from Bolivia in the summer of 1961 as a high school senior. In the decades that followed, she would lose a husband in Vietnam, raise two children as a single mother, and become a transformative figure in American public education and in service to immigrants and refugees, advocating for bilingual education and expanding opportunities for immigrant students and their families.

Part testament to the power of suffering and faith and to the challenges women face across the world, Dreams and Shadows is also a meditation on politics, class, the immigrant experience, acculturation as a lifelong process, and the importance of maintaining bicultural identity against the myth of the American "melting pot." On a deeper level, it is also the story of a life lived in service-and about the ways that suffering and joy are contained each within the other, binding us all together across cultures and boundaries.