Synopses & Reviews
”Havana knew me by my shoes”, begins Tom Miller’s lively and entertaining account of more than eight months traveling through Cuba, from coastal cities to mountain villages, from the Bay of Pigs to both sides of the fence at Guantánamo, mixing with its literati and black marketeers, its cane cutters and cigar rollers. Granted unprecedented access to travel throughout the country, the author presents us with a rare insight into one of the world’s only Communist countries. Its best-known personalities and ordinary citizens talk to him about the U.S. embargo and tell their favorite Fidel jokes as they stand in line for bread at the Socialism or Death Bakery. Miller provides a running commentary on Cuba’s food shortages, exotic sensuality, and baseball addiction as he follows the scents of Graham Greene, José Marti, Ernest Hemingway, and the Mambo Kings. The result of this informed and adventurous journey is a vibrant, rhythmic portrait of a land and people too long shielded from American eyes.
Review
"Never before has Cuba seemed so close, so warm, so accessible to a country which has imposed the harshest economic blockade ever placed against a neighbor. Miller's descriptive acumen and his eye for
irony make this engaging book both informative and important. Castro's Cubans suffer endless lines for consumer goods, ubiquitous socialist sloganeering, and a maddening bureaucracy, but do so with patience and eternal optimism. They are here displayed as a friendly and open people who hope for better times while still supporting the positive reforms in education, health care, and literacy for which they can be justifiably proud. This portrait is Cuba close up, without the political rant of either country's politicians getting in the way. We learn of living patterns, baseball, Cuban Jews, the Hemingway legacy, the racial mixture, the 'Socialism or Death' bakeries and ice cream stands, the love of family, and the subtle resistance to billboard politics that mark modern-day Cuba. 'Nobody on the bus shouted out |SOCIALISMO! despite a roadside sign urging travelers to do so,' Miller writes with his accustomed drollery. This is a touching and perceptive book." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [339]-342) and index.
About the Author
Tom Miller has been writing about the American Southwest and Latin America for more than twenty-five years. His six books include The Panama Hat Trail and On the Border, and his articles have appeared in Life, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and other publications in the United States and Mexico. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.