This story is autobiographical.
Part One
Hoffman tells of her paradise in Poland. Life among her first community was very difficult in general, but since the community was warm and fair, Eva remembers Poland like a kind of heaven. She says that her Polish community was defined by struggle and shared suffering, since WWII and the Nazi occupation of Poland had ended only two months before she was born.
Part Two
Due to the ongoing economic struggle in Poland, Eva's family decides in Part Two to move to Canada. She says that if Poland was Paradise, she regards her time in Canada as a kind of Exile. She spends time here outlining all the ways her point of view changed as a consequence of the move. She recalls the difficulty of learning English and learning Canadian life.
Part Three
This section is called "The New World" because, having adjusted to Canadian culture from Polish culture, Hoffman moves again, this time to Houston, Texas. In Texas, Hoffman describes feeling Americanized. She says that she began to feel for the first time that she herself belonged to a culture again.
After moving to Houston, Eva meets the man who will be her husband. While in Houston, Hoffman decides she will attend Harvard, and she applies and gets in.
She ends the memoir by reminding the reader that she is still on this journey toward defining herself, and finding out what culture means to her.
