The Cubans
Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
'Moving and rich...overflowing with warmth and humanity' The Times
In this pioneering work of life-writing and reportage, Anthony DePalma reconstructs the interwoven stories of five ordinary citizens and their families to bring the true story of the Cuban people to the world.
From Castro's heyday, through the devastation of post-Soviet collapse, to the false dawn of recent years, we witness the hardships of life across six decades of socialist state control - where even today the government decides what work you can do and where you live; where food is rationed, and basic medicines are unavailable.
The Cubans maps a country where the revolution that once inspired its people has since tested their faith with tragedy and disillusionment, revealing the daily acts of heroism and the endlessly adaptive resilience that are required of them to survive.
'Page-turning...revealing and unputdownable' Claire Boobbyer, Cuba travel expert
'A deeply reported...account of Cuba's bittersweet realities' Financial Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist DePalma (The Man Who Invented Fidel) delivers a sensitive portrait of Cubans navigating their "bizarre mash-up of an economy" from the 1970s through 2018. Drawn from the eastern Havana neighborhood of Guanabacoa, DePalma's subjects include Caridad "Cary" Luisa Limonta Ewen, a Communist party member and economic engineer of Jamaican descent, and artist Arturo Montoto, who returned to Cuba after a "self-imposed exile" in Chile and Mexico and makes "subtle social commentaries" in his still-life paintings. Though the U.S. embargo has created a culture of deprivation since 1960, the situation grew much worse, according to DePalma, during the "special period" in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union left Cuba without its main backer. He movingly relates the story of one survivor of the 1994 sinking of the 13 de Marzo, a tugboat filled with refugees that witnesses say was attacked by the Cuban coast guard, resulting in the deaths of 37 people. Recent food shortages, uncertainty over the transition of power between Ra l Castro and newly elected resident Miguel D az-Canel, and a crackdown on private businesses and wealth accumulation, DePalma writes, have led to fears that more hard times are coming. In impressively specific detail, DePalma captures the suffering and resilience of ordinary Cubans caught between the political posturing of their government and the U.S. Readers will savor this intimate, eye-opening account.
