As summer starts to fade away, we are delighted to feature an essay on our blog by the distinguished scholar Jorge Duany, who writes eloquently about the shift in his identity from Cuba-Rican to Cuban-American. After leaving Cuba as a child, Jorge grew up first in...
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Nana Cooks
On our blog this month of June, we thought we’d offer something a little different and share with you a video created by Gabriel Frye-Behar, honoring his abuelita’s cooking. Entitled “Nana Cooks,” this will be a series of teaching videos with Rebeca Behar showing her...
Martirio
For Cuban-Americans, visits to Cuba can be especially complex experiences. We’re elated by the company of family, yet feel clandestine. We feel at home, yet estranged at times. We’re natives, yet tourists. We want to enjoy every bit of music, food, and culture Cuba...
Can’t Hear You
This month we are thrilled to feature the writing of Ana Menéndez, who made her debut as a writer in 2002 with In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, a collection of poignant stories of Cuban-American loss and longing. The title story from that book, filled with its sad...
A Busking Dog, in Training: The New Cuba
Observers of Cuba have noticed there’s a “new Cuba” rapidly taking form. In Havana, which is the primary destination of most American tourists, reservations are required at iconically chic restaurants like La Guarida, and American hipsters are omnipresent on the...
Taking My Cousin’s Photo at the Statue of Liberty
The new year has begun with the struggle to support the rights of immigrants and refugees in the United States. At such a moment, we thought Richard's poem to his cousin, written when she recently arrived in the United States, would be good reading for all who seek to...
The Atlas of My Memory
Born in Havana into a Sephardic Jewish family and raised in the small town of Lakeland, Florida, Elisa Albo’s story is quite unique. In this month’s piece, she looks at the many layers and questions that shape individual identity. Tracing three generations, she...
The Magic Realism of Memory
Since last month’s post we’ve witnessed the election of Donald Trump and the death of Fidel Castro. In contrast to these swaggering male figures, this month Margarita Engle shares with us her passion and motivation for writing about history's unsung heroes and...
Amapola: una memoria cubana
It is truly an honor to feature Eliana Rivero's piece as our October post as we move into autumn, a season of change. Eliana is an intellectual pioneer in the field of Cuban literature. Living in Arizona, far from the Miami exile enclave, she had to rethink what it...
The Repeating Cuban
There are many different kinds of figurative “bridges” that connect us with Cuba. For some, going to Cuba means fully returning to a whole life they once lived on the island, a kind of time-travel. For those who perhaps lived only part of their childhood in Cuba and...
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