Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
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- ISBN13: 9780743246415
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban.” In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba — exiled from his family tree, his country, and his own childhood by the revolution. The memories of Carlos’s life in Havana, cut fleeting when he was just eleven years ancient, are at the heart of this stunning, evocative, and unforgettable memoir.
Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth — with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas — becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the composition in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by apt a modern American man — even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.
Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a tribute for a native land and a loving tribute to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.
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They are both flip sides of the same coin. Basically ruling-class propaganda, which I, reasonably frankly, am tired of having shoved down my throat. It’s LIES people, and just because it is a biography doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t represent reality. Just as homeless black men have no real chance of “building it,” most Cuban children had no chance to live carefree lives until the revolution as this man did. I’m not a Fidelista, but I appreciate getting an accurate picture of reality. I don’t care how emotional it is! IT’S STILL BAD! People just can’t stand to criticize anything that is emotional that happened to a name when it is described in a public way.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This is a misty-eyed memoir of an egoistical man who had a very privileged childhood. Because that idealized world was sundered, he believes he has a deeper take on suffering and displacement and he questions the reader to sympathize with his plight and along the way, to blame it all on Castro. The writing is precious, nearly cloyingly so–one would expect a historian to be more careful of his language. If the Cuba he remembers is a paradise lost, then he needs to go on. Cuba has survived well enough lacking him.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
This memoir of a Cuban childhood marked by suburban normalcy interrupted by revolution is loaded with real and make-judge boogey men. There’s plenty to frighten Carlos Eire’s pious child-self: a portrait of Christ in the dining room which speaks, a creepy lady-shaped candlestick, backyard lizards. These odd fears are offset by two loving if odd parents (the father, a judge, thinks he was Louis XVI in a previous lifetime), and a decent older brother. The best part of Eire’s childhood was having all the American excellent stuff — cartoons on TV and Lionel train sets — while living in a far superior place: superior because in Cuba no one stops your dad from driving you along a stormy sea for some “car-surfing.”
Before huge tough Fidel Castro kicks out Batista and cancels Christmas, the person small Carlos’ reviles most is his adopted brother, Ernesto (no relation to Che). We don’t learn exactly why till near the end of the book. When we do, Eire is nearly paralyzed by the hurt still; the narrative becomes raw, even propagandistic, as the crime of his adopted brother and the family tree’s dissolution comes at us just as we are getting the strongest doses yet of anti-Castro speechifying.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I have never read a book in which the leader so generously condemned people to hell. I establish the leader’s mightier-than-thou heavy-handed and oppressive. This is a work of rage and hatred rather than a full picture of a country. I hope that anyone who reads this book realizes how slanted Carlos Eire’s words are. I just returned from four months in Cuba, no, things aren’t perfect, but it isn’t the oppressive purgatory that Eire would have youo judge.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Let me start by adage that I really loved reading this book, and so much of it is gorgeous and likeable. The tale of Eire’s childhood, interspersed with his adult insights is moving, amusing, sad, and reasonably lovely. There are so many wonderful characters, wonderfully described–his father who believes in reincarnation, his devout mother, his free-spirited cousin, his violent foster brother. The distress is that it seems nearly impossible to write about 1960’s Cuba lacking digressing into a political rant. Notice that I don’t say political commentary or political argument. Eire starts with devious and effective commentary that quickly becomes overly emotional ranting. The fact that his emotions are perfectly understandable doesn’t strengthen his position.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5