La Americana

May 23, 2016
Within six months of getting a cancer diagnosis, writer and journalist Bowden Simón’s mother is dead, setting her daughter off on an emotional roller-coaster of journey to Cuba, where she falls in love. Her account vividly captures the agony, joy, and peacefulness from this period in her life. Bowden Simón is 25 in April 2001, four months after her mother’s death; she leaves Talk and New York, desperate to get away from the city that reminds her too much of the mother with whom she shared her blond looks, a sense of humor, and a deep appreciation for theater. She meets Luis her first night in Havana when she jumps into his cab, and their very unexpected romance begins. He doesn’t speak English, has a young child, and lives in an impoverished country where the average monthly income is $10 and the government funds a heavily armed military presence. Despite many odds, including a crackdown by President Bush, tougher restrictions on travel to Cuba, Luis’s difficulty getting a visa, and the strangeness of how their connection looks to some, their relationship grows over visits, emails, and calls. Bowden Simón’s travels and struggles are beautifully rendered in this evocative valentine to her mother, Cuba, and the power of love in the unlikeliest of places to heal a broken heart and spirit.

May 15, 2016
Political antagonisms fail to thwart a cross-cultural love affair.In April 2001, a few months after her mother died of inoperable liver cancer, Simon took a trip to Cuba with a friend, a journey that proved both eye-opening and life-changing. In her debut memoir, the author recounts both her mother's death and the trip, which was planned "as an off-path adventure," featuring salsa and margaritas, and became, in her grief, "an escape, a desperately needed break from life without Mom." The loss of her mother, she reflects, "had redefined me, springing brain circuits loose." Noticing the poverty and repression in Castro's Cuba--food was rationed, all workers were paid equally low wages, Cuban citizens were forbidden to use hotel facilities, and armed police were everywhere--the author wondered "why people even bothered going to school at all, despite the famously good, free education." Yet despite these conditions, Cubans evinced much laughter, playfulness, and joy. Maybe, she thought, she could revive those feelings in herself--and she did after meeting Luis, a strikingly handsome taxi driver. The attraction was mutual and, she repeatedly attests, electrifying. When Luis first kissed her, she felt "an electric shock." He made her flash "like a bulb," and once, when he asked her to take a walk, she felt "a surge of energy...from my chest into my ears." Their attraction seemed nothing less than "delirium...as we carried on in our escalating and hyper interest." Their love, however, was threatened by travel restrictions imposed by their respective countries. Simon rushed back into Luis' arms each time she arrived in Havana, and she wept on each plane ride back to the U.S. Overcoming daunting legal hurdles, they finally married, and Luis managed to come to Savannah, where their family lives. Some awkward prose and clashing metaphors mar the author's heartfelt rendering of her Cuban adventure.

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