Even those who didn’t know one another recognized their neighbors’ struggles as a simulacrum of their own. Rows of nearly indistinguishable homes, on equal-sized plots of land. Each filled with three generations: grandparents who spoke with accents; parents who understood the old language but didn’t speak it well; and children who knew only a few exclamatory or culinary words. Every family, it seemed, occupied the same place in their American trajectory—not only a cultural and chronological intersection, but an economic one too. It was their sameness that protected them. It allowed them to be
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