Next Year in Cuba: A Cubano's Coming-Of-Age in America
Like other members of the "one-and-a-half" generation?Cuban exiles who came to the U.S. as children?the author sees the Christmas Eve toast "Next year in Cuba" as a "magical, monotonous mantra" pulling at his divided loyalties. Now a professor of Spanish at Duke University, Perez Firmat sensitively probes his dual identity, sketching Little Havana in Miami and recounting his family heritage, with an ear enriched by both his languages. His people were upper-class gusanos (worms), the name the Castro regime gives its opponents. He opines that the move to Miami cost him his father, who lost his business and his spirit, although his mother feels exile saved her marriage. Suffocating family loyalties have tensed the author and his two brothers against one another; now, he observes, "our best chance to have a real family is to start one." Thus the author divorced his Cuban wife, and Mary Anne, his second wife, became his first americana. Now in middle age, he has become more rooted in the U.S. even as he finds a sense of Cuban identity. Finally, he writes, the trip to Miami "still feels like regreso [return] but no longer like regression." Illustrations.- but no longer like regression." Illustrations.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.