Some of the anthology's authors, paid $2,499 by the government, praise the freedoms they enjoy in the United States, but the collection by no means presents an uncritical picture of the United States. Julia Alvarez, a novelist and poet who moved from the Dominican Republic when she was young, writes that America is not "free of problems or inequalities or even hypocrisies." Robert Olen Butler says that the United States, though `built on the preservation of the rights of minorities, has sometimes been slow to apply those rights fully." Michael Chabon tells of crime and racial unrest in his hometown, Columbia, Md.