The Cosmic Hustle: An Immigrant's Survival Guide to Breaking and Rebuilding the American Dream

Synopsis

Welcome to the wild, raw, and ridiculously funny memoir of a Romanian immigrant who didn't just chase the American Dream—she crash-landed into it, set it on fire, and built something better from the ashes. From a raw, communal childhood in Romania where life was lived outside, to the isolating suburbs of America, Crina felt like a glitch in the system, misunderstood and unseen, especially with undiagnosed ADHD. Yet, she academically soared, only to dive headfirst into a toxic love story, motherhood, and a spiraling descent into drugs, psychedelics, and the terrifying reality of homelessness—living in cars, tents, and hitting rock bottom in Baltimore. This is a story of addiction, betrayal, losing custody, a pivotal suicide attempt that forced a brutal reckoning, and a journey to radical honesty that became the ultimate cure. Through surreal, sometimes hallucinatory scenes, Crina navigates the darkness, exposes the lies (including her own), and finds a path to spiritual rebuilding. Equal parts tear-jerking and laugh-out-loud hilarious, *The Cosmic Hustle* is a survival manual for millennials who know the polished dream is a lie, proving that sometimes you have to break everything to finally find yourself.