The Havana habit
By: Gustavo Pérez Firmat
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9780300141320
Subjects: Social life and customs; In popular culture; Cuban influences; Civilization; Cuban National characteristics; Americans; Travel; Popular culture; History
Description: Cuba, an island 750 miles long, with a population of about 11 million, lies less than 100 miles off the U.S. coast. Yet the island's influences on America's cultural imagination are extensive and deeply ingrained.  In this book the author probes the importance of Havana, and of greater Cuba, in the cultural history of the United States. Through books, advertisements, travel guides, films, and music, he demonstrates the influence of the island on almost two centuries of American life. From John Quincy Adams's comparison of Cuba to an apple ready to drop into America's lap, to the latest episodes in the lives of the "comic comandantes and exotic exiles," and to such notable Cuban exports as the rumba and the mambo, cigars and mojitos, the Cuba that emerges from these pages is a locale that Cubans and Americans have jointly imagined and inhabited. The book deftly illustrates what makes Cuba, as the author writes, "so near and yet so foreign."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.