Greek mythology's princess Cassandra was given the power of prophecy, but when she refused the advances of the god Apollo, she was cursed forever with disbelief. Millennia later, a slight, blond 10-year-old in Cienfuegos, Cuba, insists, "I don't want to be this Raúl, I want...
Gabriela Garcia turns her MFA thesis for Purdue University (where she studied with the revered Roxane Gay) into her widely buzzed first novel. Presented in 12 chapters that read more like interlinked stories, Garcia channels her Miami-based Cuban-Mexican American heritage into five generations of a...
*STARRED REVIEW The family is Cuban. The son, 18, is fulfilling his military conscription, enduring mind-numbing sentry duty any way he can until his release. The mother, once a schoolteacher, is housebound with a violently debilitating illness. The father, who manages a four-star tourist hotel, is...
Banned Book Club by Kim Hyun Sook with Ryan Estrada, illustrated by Ko Hyung-Ju Busan-based wife-and-husband team Kim and Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous...
Yeah, sure: Proust and his madeleine-dipped-in-tea set the barometer for toothsome leitmotifs. I admit to the possibility that my academic indoctrination in his long, long musings made me quite the hungry reader. Or maybe I’m just always greedy for nourishment, with preferences in the belly...
The retired-detective-turned-Santería-priest Padrino gets a second chance to play savior in Teresa Dovalpage's continuing Havana Mystery series. She mines familiar territory from book one, Death Comes in Through the Kitchen (2018), using another bathroom murder to intertwine the lives of U.S. visitors with Cuban locals. Two decades...
Oh, good gracious! I can’t stand it: soooo many amazing books and my aging eyeballs just can’t keep up! Last week at ALA Annual, I got to “Read ‘n’ Rave,” but I had such an embarrassingly overflowing list, the buzzer went off (uh-oh!), and I couldn’t...
Organized by the Academy of American Poets, National Poetry Month, in April, has been celebrated annually since 1996. While reading, writing, even performing poetry should be a year-round activity, National Poetry Month is a welcome catalyst to get verse newbies and doubters interested and involved. In...
For a self-described “young American photojournalist who then boasted only pidgin Spanish,” David Ariosto’s arrival in Havana in 2009 on assignment for CNN was “the chance of a lifetime.” Determined to be “somehow different from those pink-faced tourists,” he’s quickly reduced to an epithet, yuma – street...
Two timely books titled Our Woman in Havana hit shelves this year: a memoir by U.S. diplomat Vicki Huddleston and this account by former BBC Cuba correspondent (2011-2014) Rainsford, who was “guided by the writing of another English visitor seduced by Havana,” novelist Graham Greene. A...
More than 65 million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have been forced to leave their homes. Whether they are made refugees in another country or displaced internally, 2017 UN data shows that “nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute as a...
In 1959 Havana, as Fidel Castro claims absolute power, the sugar-rich Perez family's vast wealth marks them as targets, necessitating their escape to Miami, FL. With her three sisters and their parents, 19-year-old Elisa Perez leaves Cuba forever. Almost 60 years later, Marisol Ferrara arrives in...
As the world welcomes 1959, 17-year-old Sonya is a hopeful young woman, despite the violent chaos that threatens her home city of Havana. Her boyfriend has already fled Cuba for Miami with his family, but Sonya is determined to contribute to the coming revolution by...
Matt Sullivan, a San Diego–based, bilingual tabloid features writer, arrives in 2003 Havana with ring and wedding dress in hand for his Cuban fianceé, Yarmi, only to find her lifeless body in the bathtub. Considered charming, chatty, and caring by all who knew her, Yarmi,...
*STARRED REVIEW The term "refugee" is constantly in the news. In direct response, Alan Gratz gets personal with desensitizing statistics, policies, and politics by giving names, families, and histories to three tweens fleeing three countries during three time periods. Each fits the "refugee" label but is...
President Obama’s historic December 17, 2014 order to “normalize relations” between the United States and Cuba began the restoration of diplomacy after more than half a century of hostile restrictions. His 72-hour visit to Havana in March 2016 – the first made by a sitting...
Once upon a time, Cuba was an enigmatic, faraway place that conjured up images of I Love Lucy, history lessons about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recurring headlines about Guantánamo. As far as books go, two loomed large: Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, a multi-generational...
*STARRED REVIEW 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 Leila Guerriero at the start of her anthology of stupendously astute essays. Half are...
This is the second in a two-part series of recommended books for youth about the refugee experience. For a list of picture books, click here. Canada, with her groovin' President, functional healthcare system, and more welcoming borders, is currently in the throes of "Month 13," the first month following...
*STARRED REVIEW A mother, Soledad, flees Cuba, abandoning her revolutionary husband Uxmal and absconding with their 12-year-old twins Ulises and Isabel. She bypasses Miami for Hartford, CT, finding work as a court stenographer, making her the transcriber of other people's words. Although Uxmal’s presence never seems to...
