Cuba on the Verge

October 1, 2017
Cuba is on the verge...but of what?Argentinian journalist Guerriero (A Simple Story: The Last Malambo, 2017, etc.) brings together 12 writers to assess the state of Cuba today in these very personal essays. Six natives write from the inside, six from the outside looking in. Theirs is a somber take on the island country. Novelist Patricia Engel writes about "Mi Amigo Manuel," who works six days a week driving people around Havana in his classic American car. He succinctly captures the country's ennui in just a few sentences: popes and presidents come and go, "but for us, nothing changes. Here we are. Here we will always be....The same Cuba, the same ruta, the same struggle always." His pessimistic attitude echoes throughout the book. Even baseball, which is discussed a few times, has changed. Soccer has taken over. Cuban journalist/novelist Leonardo Padura reflects back on his youth and his passion for the game in the bittersweet "Dreaming in Cuba." Fidel's Castro's revolution took away the proud profession of baseball and turned it into an amateur sport, ending players' livelihoods. What Padura sees in the streets of Havana "is not a simple phenomenon of fashion or sports preference: it is a cultural trauma of unpredictable consequences for the Cuban identity." What one finds all over Cuba now, besides the shortages of basic items, are the jineteras, women who prostitute themselves, and the jineteros, men who play the gigolo for foreign visitors. In her shocking "Glamour and Revolution," Cuban poet and novelist Wendy Guerra notes that abortion is now the country's contraception, and as for the "female figure's relationship to Cuban heroes, leaders, and rulers, she isn't even in the background. She simply doesn't exist." As screenwriter and director Mauricio Vicent ironically puts it, for most, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is magical realism. In Cuba, it's a "deeply sensible and realistic novel."An affecting portrait of a country that is awash in poverty, sadness, and uncertainty.

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October 9, 2017
This fascinating anthology from journalist Guerriero (A Simple Story) gathers together reflections on life in Cuba written by both natives and outsiders. The subjects profiled in the 12 entries include baseball players, actors, jineteros (hustlers), Tropicana dancers, and, in the best chapter (by Princeton professor Rubén Gallo), the owner of a clandestine bookstore–cum–dog shelter and male brothel. What emerges from these portraits (most of them translated) is the resilience of the Cuban people, who, as Cuban poet Wendy Guerra writes, can “convertir el revés en victoria, as the revolutionary maxim goes—turn the setback into a victory.” The collection places particular emphasis on the “Special Period,” the roughly decade-long time after the Cold War when Cubans struggled with the loss of Soviet economic support. There are candid revelations about women’s liberation and abortion rights, illegal cockfighting, and how being an artist “is the best paid profession,” along with interesting observations on the reception given to visitors, notably President Obama and Pope Francis. Not quite a travelogue, this appealing volume will nevertheless satisfy any Americans wanting to be transported into the lives and experiences of real Cubans.

Starred review from September 15, 2017
Since Obama's 2014 visit reestablishing ties between the U.S. and Cuba, American travelers have had the long-lost opportunity for direct exploration, but there are no easy answers, warns Argentinian journalist Guerriero at the start of her anthology of stupendously astute essays. Half are by authors writing from within Cuba, others by outsiders passing through, and only three were originally written in English. The view from the inside includes a visit by a young Cuban to his recently immigrated doctor father turned coconut-gatherer in Miami and an exploration of transitions (to what?) in a country where today everything is considered a turning point. Vladimir Cruz writes about costarring in Cuba's only Oscar-nominated film, Strawberry and Chocolate. Other contributors consider feminism within revolutionary socialism, Cuban baseball history, and jinetero, locals who sell companionship and sex to tourists. Moving outside in the second half reveals post-Obama politics, everyday Cuban lives, the quality-of-life divide between foreigners and locals, not-so-hidden secrets both mercantile and religious, the legendary Tropicana nightclub a quarter-century ago and currently, and a captivating Havana bookstore. Marked by doubt and contradiction, Guerriero's meticulously curated dozen essays offers an irresistibly beckoning window onto a nation just 90 miles from American shores, though far away in practice and culture.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2017

Twelve writers, 12 stories--all focusing on change in Cuba. These essays, edited by journalist Guerriero (A Simple Story), offer little reflection on the aftermath of the 1950s Cuban Revolution but a great deal on the country at present and hope for the future following changes in American policy toward its island neighbor. From the passion of baseball in Cuba to the lavish nightclubs and casinos of Havana through the scarcity and harshness of the "special period" to a papal visit in 2014, here Cuba is exposed through the eyes of its people, Americans living in or visiting the country, and other visitors. The writers--journalists, novelists, a Princeton professor, and even an actor--give remarkable accounts of Cuban life. One man is introduced to Western goods he never knew--chocolate and tinfoil. The theme of uncertainty runs through most of the pages, including a taxi driver who laments that although popes and presidents visit Cuba, nothing changes. Many don't want to leave family behind so they stay and struggle in a place where even professionals earn just $30 a month. VERDICT Recommended for all readers seeking to understand life just 90 miles off the U.S. Southern Coast. [See Prepub Alert, 6/26/17.]--Boyd Childress, formerly with Auburn Univ. Libs., AL

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017

Conceived before the Trump administration's reversal of President Obama's refreshed U.S. policy regarding Cuba, this collection of essays is now all the more relevant. Key writers investigate the country's current status and transformation. There's Francisco Goldman on the Tropicana, Leonardo Padura on Cuban baseball, Patricia Engel on taxi riding in Havana, and New Yorker author Jon Lee Anderson, who traveled with President Obama on the first trip to Cuba by an American president since the 1920s, on Cuba's political climate.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.