Synopses & Reviews
Traveling Heavy is a deeply moving, unconventional memoir by the master storyteller and cultural anthropologist Ruth Behar. Through evocative stories, she portrays her life as an immigrant child and later, as an adult woman who loves to travel but is terrified of boarding a plane. With an open heart, she writes about her Yiddish-Sephardic-Cuban-American family, as well as the strangers who show her kindness as she makes her way through the world. Compassionate, curious, and unafraid to reveal her failings, Behar embraces the unexpected insights and adventures of travel, whether those be learning that she longed to become a mother after being accused of giving the evil eye to a baby in rural Mexico, or going on a zany pilgrimage to the Behar World Summit in the Spanish town of Bandeacute;jar.
Behar calls herself an anthropologist who specializes in homesickness. Repeatedly returning to her homeland of Cuba, unwilling to utter her last goodbye, she is obsessed by the question of why we leave home to find home. For those of us who travel heavy with our own baggage, Behar is an indispensable guide, full of grace and hope, in the perpetual search for connection that defines our humanity.
Review
andldquo;A heartfelt witness to the changing political and emotional landscape of the Cuban-American experience.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;All those intrigued by their ancestral story will be moved by the personal quest and also by howandmdash;with the help of computers as well as the kindness of strangersandmdash;the lost can find their way home.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;and#39;Travelers are those who go elsewhere because they want to . . . Immigrants are those who go elsewhere because they have to.and#39; Ruth Beharand#39;s own story is one of being both the reluctant immigrant and the enthusiastic traveler, and finally, perhaps to appease both legacies, and#39;an anthropologist who specializes in homesickness.and#39; Behar admits Spanish is her mother tongue, and yet she is a master craftsperson in her father tongue, English. As always, her exquisite stories leave me astonished, amused, exhilarated, illuminated, and forever transformed.andquot;
Review
andquot;Traveling Heavy speaks to issuesandmdash;the impact of religion on social identity, the cultural and linguistic discomforts of immigration, the social tensions found in multicultural and multigenerational families, the texture of relations between parents and childrenandmdash;that define our humanity. Whatand#39;s more, Ruth Behar skillfully weaves these complex issues into a gripping story of personal challenge and growth. Her artful memoir is filled with grace.andquot;
Review
andquot;Ruth Behar graces us with her provocative and enchanting memoir of travel and self discovery: as a mother, as a writer, as an anthropologist, and as a child of exile and homecomings. Traveling Heavy is a memoir of wonder from one of the leading Latina artists of the U.S.A.andquot;
Review
andquot;Ruth Behar takes us deep into geographies she has charted, transcending anthropological reportage and finding the poetry that is there not only in the places she has mapped but also in history. She has written an observant and surprisingly compassionate book, full of warmth. I enjoyed reading every page; it is full of wisdom and devastating sincerity.andquot;
Review
andquot;Ruth Beharand#39;s vivid personal vignettes sing of sorrow and joy, disappointment and love. They range from family and fieldwork to travel and returns to her birthplace: Havana, Cuba. They explore her mixedness, Jewish and Latina. She is an ethnographer and a writer. Read and join her moving quest for belonging and home.andquot;
Review
andquot;Traveling Heavy is the product of a poetic mind, and the work itself can be regarded as prose poetry. Behar has not recovered from her andlsquo;interrupted childhoodandrsquo; in Havana, and it is this tragedy that makes her who she is, that shapes the ghosts she pursues, that has guided her steps as a subjective anthropologist; and that is able to offer the reader a smorgasbord of literary delights.andquot;
Review
andldquo;A moving story of finding oneself through a lifetime of travel, this will be a terrific addition to memoir and Judaica collections.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;So much of Ruth Beharandrsquo;s life story resonates with me. My mother is Cuban, and to paraphrase Winston Churchill, I may be half Cuban and half American, but there are so many times I feel completely Cuban. When I finally went to Cuba last fall, it was like returning to a place to which I had never been. I am the Cubana that Ruth Behar describes in her fascinating new memoir, Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in Between Journeys,andrsquo; one that is part of an andlsquo;intensely diasporic people.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;In writing, the distance between the world and the self collapses, and the latter becomes a medium through which the former can be understood; the world becomes a function of the self. Thus, writing becomes the solution to the search for identity. Like Kafka, Behar takes part in self-creation. Through the act of composing a memoir about her search, she writes tand#160;and#160;Add and#160;he lost homeland and the lost self into existence.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Ruth Beharandrsquo;s latest work, Traveling Heavy: A Memoir in between Journeys, is a book filled with grace; it is anthropologically contoured text that has legs. and#160;It has breadth, for its compelling narratives will attract a diverse audience of readers who will pour through the pages, delighting in the poignant details underscored by Beharandrsquo;s life as a person who travels with burdens of past and present. and#160;It also has depth, for Traveling Heavy is a book that will remain open to the world, a work that will be savored for many years to come.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Cuban-American anthropologist Ruth Behar avoids the polarizing politics so typical of Cuban exiles to write an affecting memoir about how notions of home and displacement in relation to the Cuban revolution have shaped her life, and describes the experiences of finding her and#39;ownand#39; Cuba, a version of the island that differs from that of her parents and their generation of exiles. Beharandrsquo;s memoir will be of particular interest to Jewish readers, as she recounts her familyandrsquo;s search for safety and home in Cuba and the changing identity of Cubaandrsquo;s own Jewish community over the years since the revolution.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In Ruth Behar's intimate, unconventional memoir, poignant memories of growing up as an immigrant child come together with reflections on being a traveling anthropologist who cherishes the kindness of strangers.
About the Author
Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba. She and her family moved to New York City when she was five. In the years since, she has become an internationally acclaimed writer and the Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. She is the author of many books, including An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba; The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart; and Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza's Story, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. In addition to her work as an anthropologist, Behar is a poet, a fiction writer, and a documentary filmmaker. She wrote, directed, and produced Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love), a film that has been shown at film festivals around the world. Behar has been honored with many prizes, including a MacArthur andquot;Geniusandquot; Award.