Why a Booktrail?
1930s-1980s : The Cuban revolution seen through the eyes of three very different women
Dreaming in Cuban
What you need to know before your trail
The story of three generations of Cuban women, jumping forward and backward in time, between Cuba and New York. This is the story of the Cuban Revolution from the eyes of three different women. Celia del Pino, in her 60s, is a loyal Cuban patriot, who lives by the sea. Daughter Lourdes, has fled to America and owns a bakery in Brooklyn whereas the other daughter, Felicia, who is still in Cuba, shows signs of mental health problems. She practices the old religion of Santería. Pilar, the granddaughter, is a rebellious teenager, and although she has been raised in America she still feels as if she belongs in Cuba.
Travel Guide
An intricate weaving of dramatic events and those surrounding the Cuban revolution with a sprinkling of the supernatural at the same time. In the words of granddaughter Pilar, “Cuba is a peculiar exile, I think an island-colony. We can reach it by a thirty-minute charter flight from Miami, yet never reach it at all.”
Cuba holds special memories, nostalgic memories:
“Magnificent finned automobiles cruise grandly down the street like parade floats. I feel like we’re back in time, in a kind of Cuban version of an earlier America.”
Florida – Miami is the heart of the Cuban exiles and it the stories of their time in Cuba where we learn about the soul and character that Cuba has – El Encanto – for example – where the girls talk of – was the largest department store in Cuba, built in 1888, and situated on the corner of Galiano and San Rafael in Old Havana – it was destroyed by fire in 1961. And we found the whole concept of Santería – a syncretic religion which Felicia believes in, that grew out of the slave trade in Cuba – as fascinating.
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