Readings on Race

A Party for Lazarus is the story of a Cuban family, six generations removed from slavery, struggling to honor its ancestors amid changing fortunes and a crumbling state. This intimate intergenerational account centers on an annual feast celebrating ancestors and orisás--the life-changing spirits at the heart of Black Atlantic religious life. Based on twenty years of fieldwork, Todd Ramón Ochoa's masterful ethnography shows how orisá praise and everyday life have changed in revolutionary Cuba over two decades of economic hardship.

Are all immigrants from the same home country best understood as a homogeneous group of foreign-born? Or do they differ in their adaptation and transnational ties depending on when they emigrated and with what lived experiences? Between Castro's rise to power in 1959 and the early twenty-first century more than a million Cubans immigrated to the United States. While it is widely known that Cuban émigrés have exerted a strong hold on Washington policy toward their homeland, Eckstein uncovers a fascinating paradox: the recent arrivals, although poor and politically weak, have done more to transform their homeland than the influential and prosperous early exiles who have tried for half a century to bring the Castro regime to heel.

A survivor of the Cuban Revolution recounts his pre-war childhood as the religiously devout son of a judge father who fancied himself a reincarnated King Louis XVI, and describes the conflict's violent and irrevocable impact on his friends, family, and native home.

The Legacy of Exile , the latest entry in the New Immigrants Series, deals with one of the most visible and political of all U.S. immigrant groups-Cubans. This is a group that was welcomed to the United States, that transformed a major U.S. metropolitan area, that exerts a powerful-and controversial-impact on U.S. foreign policy, and that has achieved, in a relatively short time, economic success in this country. The theme of the book is that the Cuban presence has been shaped by the experience of exile.

Today more than one million emigrés make up the Cuban diaspora, and many, though living in America, still consider themselves part of Cuba. This book captures the struggles and dreams of Cuban Americans. Using this resource, students, teachers, and interested readers can examine the engaging and often controversial details of Cuban immigration. Such details include patterns of immigration, adaptation to American life and work, cultural traditions, religious traditions, women's roles, the family, adolescence, language, and education. Because the author is himself a Cuban American, he does not treat the emigrés as mere subjects nor does he tell their story in statistical terms alone.

"When you ask my sons where they are from they will answer, 'I'm Cuban, but I was born in McAllen, Texas.'"--Maria Luisa Salcines, born in Guantánamo, Cuba, who came to the United Sates in 1963. Between 1960 and 1995 over one million Cubans arrived in the United States.Though it is less than 100 miles from Cuba to the tip of Florida, the journey was often a dangerous and unpredictable voyage in makeshift boats. The "Golden Exiles" who escaped Fidel Castro's revolutionary government between 1959 and 1962 were probably the best-educated and wealthiest large group of immigrants ever to arrive in the United States.

The 1980 Mariel Boatlift was a profound episode in twentieth-century American history, impacting not just Florida, but the entire country. During the first twenty days of the boatlift, with little support from the federal government, the state of Florida coordinated and responded to the sudden arrival in Key West of more than thirty thousand Cuban refugees, the first wave of immigrants who became known as "Marielitos." Kathleen Dupes Hawk, Ron Villella, Adolfo Leyva de Varona, and Kristen Cifers combine the insights of expert observers with the experiences of actual participants.

Finding Mañanais a vibrant, moving memoir of one family's life in Cuba and their wrenching departure. Mirta Ojito was born in Havana and raised there until the unprecedented events of the Mariel boatlift brought her to Miami, one teenager among more than a hundred thousand fellow refugees. Now a reporter for The New York Times, Ojito goes back to reckon with her past and to find the people who set this exodus in motion and brought her to her new home. She tells their stories and hers in superb and poignant detail-chronicling both individual lives and a major historical event.

Winner, 2020 Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York history Honorable Mention, 2019 CASA Literary Prize for Studies on Latinos in the United States, given by La Casa de las Américas The dramatic story of the origins of the Cuban community in nineteenth-century New York. More than one hundred years before the Cuban Revolution of 1959 sparked an exodus that created today's prominent Cuban American presence, Cubans were settling in New York City in what became largest community of Latin Americans in the nineteenth-century Northeast.

Modern Cuba comes alive in a vibrant portrait of a group of families's varied journeys in one community over the last twenty years. Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. In his new book, Anthony DePalma, a veteran reporter with years of experience in Cuba, focuses on a neighborhood across the harbor from Old Havana to dramatize the optimism as well as the enormous challenges that Cubans face: a moving snapshot of Cuba with all its contradictions as the new regime opens the gate to the capitalism that Fidel railed against for so long.

Combining archaeological and historical methods, Gabino La Rosa Corzo provides the most detailed and accurate available account of the runaway slave settlements (palenques) that formed in the inaccessible mountain chains of eastern Cuba from 1737 to 1850, decades before the end of slavery on the island. The traces that remain of these communities provide important clues to historical processes such as slave resistance and emancipation, anticolonial insurgency, and the emergence of a free peasantry.

Kat D. Williams traces Isabel "Lefty" Alvarez's life from her childhood in Cuba, where she played baseball with the boys on the streets of El Cerro, to her reinvention as a professional baseball player and American citizen. Isabel "Lefty" Alvarez gives the reader a look into Alvarez's young life in Cuba during the turbulent years leading up to Castro's revolution, as political differences tore families apart. Alvarez came to the United States at fifteen, speaking no English, and experienced the challenge of immigration as her mother pushed her to become a professional athlete in her newly adopted country.

Analysis of the predicted success or failure of the lifting of the U.S trade embargo on Cuba's government and economy.

During only a few months in 1980, 125,000 Cubans entered the United States as part of a massive migration known as the Mariel boatlift. The images of boats of all sizes, in various conditions, filled with Cubans of all colors and ages, triggered a media storm. Fleeing Cuba's repressive government, many homosexual men and women arrived in the United States only to face further obstacles. Deemed "undesirables" by the U.S. media, the Cuban state, and Cuban Americans already living in Miami, these new entrants marked a turning point in Miami's Cuban American and gay histories.

This title tell the story of 14,000 children who were sent out of Cuba alone by desperate parents, fearing for their children's future under Castro, between 1960 and 1962.

A stirring account of the covert effort to smuggle Cuban children into the United States in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's rise to power, Fleeing Castro brings to light the humanitarian program designed to care for the children once they arrived and the hardship and suffering endured by the families who took part in Operation Pedro Pan.From late 1960 until the October 1962 missile crisis, 14,048 unaccompanied Cuban children left their homeland, the small island suddenly at the center of the Cold War struggle. Their parents, unable to obtain visas to leave Cuba, believed a short separation would be preferable to subjecting their offspring to Castro's totalitarian Marxist state.

Against All Hope is Armando Valladares' account of over twenty years in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag. Arrested in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism, Valladares was not released until 1982, by which time he had become one of the world's most celebrated "prisoners of conscience." Interned all those years at the infamous Isla de Pinos prison (from whose windows he watched the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion), Valladares suffered endless days of violence, putrid food and squalid living conditions, while listening to Castro's firing squads eliminating "counter revolutionaries" in the courtyard below his cell.

This report describes the impact on the Dade County, Florida, public school system of the 125 Cuban (and some Haitian) refugees arriving in the Mariel exodus. In September 1980 the school system had to absorb 13,000 new refugee students. Preparing for the students included hiring many bilingual teachers, reopening schools that had closed, establishing special entrant schools and programs, and obtaining funding. In the first year overcrowding was a drastic problem, with as many as 60 students in some classes. Many of the students were not well prepared, with median scores of 33% in basic reading skills and 24% in mathematics tests in Spanish.]

Among the nearly 90,000 Cubans who settled in New York City and Miami in the 1940s and 1950s were numerous musicians and entertainers, black and white, who did more than fill dance halls with the rhythms of the rumba, mambo, and cha cha cha. In her history of music and race in midcentury America, Christina D. Abreu argues that these musicians, through their work in music festivals, nightclubs, social clubs, and television and film productions, played central roles in the development of Cuban, Afro-Cuban, Latino, and Afro-Latino identities and communities.

Memory Mambo describes the life of Juani Casas, a 25-year-old Cuban-born American lesbian who manages her family's laundromat in Chicago while trying to cope with family, work, love, sex, and the weirdness of North American culture. Achy Obejas's writing is sharp and mordantly funny. She understands perfectly how the romance of exile--from a homeland as well as from heterosexuality--and the mundane reality of everyday life balance one another. Memory Mambo is ultimately very moving in its depiction of what it means to find a new and finally safe sense of home.

Compilation of statements issued by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations and authors during 1967-1982.

For many Cubans, Fidel Castro's Revolution represented deliverance from a legacy of inequality and national disappointment. For others--especially those exiled in the United States--Cuba's turn to socialism made the prerevolutionary period look like paradise lost. Michael J. Bustamante unsettles this familiar schism by excavating Cubans' contested memories of the Revolution's roots and results over its first twenty years. Cubans' battles over the past, he argues, not only defied simple political divisions; they also helped shape the course of Cuban history itself.

Set against the sweeping backdrop of one of the most dramatic refugee crises of the twentieth century, The Mariel Boatlift presents the stories of Cuban immigrants to the United States who overcame frightening circumstances to build new lives for themselves and flourish in their adopted country.

Close the door. Leave all your possessions behind. Embark onto uncharted waters. Arrive to a new land that embraces you with open arms. Face your new reality. Learn a new language. Roll up your sleeves and start over. Welcome! Who are you now? Global instability has existed throughout history, bringing with it unforeseen circumstances. Through this autoethnography, the author brings to life her own experiences growing up with two cultural identities.

For fifty-five years U.S.-Cuban relations were couched in terms of the Cold War, often pitting Cubans in the diaspora against Cubans who remained in their homeland. This collection of Cuban and Cuban-American writing and art celebrates the informal networks that Cubans in both countries have maintained through artistic, academic, family, and other ties. The book brings together for the first time in English Cuban voices of the second generation, both on the island and in the diaspora.

In this lyrical novel set in a Cuban-American neighborhood in Miami, three generations of women face an unexpected--and ultimately life-changing--trial. When Maribel, an overly cautious and orderly market analyst, gives birth to a severely handicapped baby, her mother, Adela, and her grandmother Cuca must put aside their differences to fill his short life with love. This means more than just a shift in attitude for Cuca, who speaks regularly to her deceased husband, and for Adela, a middle-aged beautician with a penchant for the lottery and her friend's husband.

A literary guide to one of the most fascinating countries in the world--Cuba. Cuba has always been one of the most compelling places in the world but perhaps never more so than now. With Raoul's promise to resign in 2018, the era of Castroism is all but over and the 2014 US-Cuba rapprochement has opened the country up for the first time to a generation of Americans whose only previous way in was through film and literature. The coming years will undoubtedly bring significant changes to a country that has in many ways been frozen in time.

This book studies civic organizations in Miami's Cuban community. Few places in the United States have been transformed by immigration the way Miami has been transformed by Cuban exiles. Cuban civic organizations help to explain why this is the case. Civic organizations are the heart of the story of the social and political power and influence of Miami's Cuban community. This community is home to a broad tradition of active political participation and many civic organizations. The sheer number of organizations suggests they have something to do with the community's considerable vibrancy and civic capacity.

This book provides an analysis of the Cuban American community and its relationship to Miami-based English- and Spanish-language media. Based on extensive ethnographic data, the author demonstrates how different media have been used, produced and influenced by segments of the Cuban American community in Miami. After establishing the significance of Miami as a locale to receive a high number of migrants after the Cuban revolution in 1959, what follows is an exploration of the interplay of collective Cuban American identity and the evolution of an exile community on the one hand and media institutions and their output on the other.

In The Cuban Hustle, Sujatha Fernandes explores the multitudinous ways artists, activists, and ordinary Cubans have hustled to survive and express themselves in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse. Whether circulating information on flash drives as a substitute for the internet or building homemade antennas to listen to Miami's hip hop radio stations, Cubans improvise alternative strategies and workarounds to contend with ongoing isolation.

In February 1962, three years into Fidel Castro's rule of their Cuban homeland, the González family--an auto mechanic, his wife, and two young children--landed in Miami with a few personal possessions and two bottles of Cuban rum. As his parents struggled to find work, eleven-year-old Gerardo struggled to fit in at school, where a teacher intimidated him and school authorities placed him on a vocational track. Inspired by a close friend, Gerardo decided to go to college. He not only graduated but, with hard work and determination, placed himself on a path through higher education that brought him to a deanship at the Indiana University School of Education.

In 1959, Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba after overthrowing the government of Fulgencio Batista. In response, thousands of Cubans fled the island, mostly to the United States. This book tells the stories of these Cubans in exile, all of whom overcame great obstacles to escape the brutal Castro regime. Neither a history of Cuba nor of Castro, this book illuminates the underrepresented legacy of the Cuban Exile Community and celebrates their continued thriving in a new country.

This book presents the reader with a detailed analysis of the U.S. policy toward Cuba that was designed and adopted by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Based in governmental and other sources from both the U.S. and Cuba, the book analyzes the changes in the U.S. policy and its political and practical effects. Cuba still had to face a combination of "dirty war" and "passive containment," but during the course of the 1960s, the influence of the "dirty war" policy was weakened due to the failure of the tactics to overthrow the Cuban Revolution by violent means.

Gustavo Pérez Firmat is the David Feinson Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, he is also the author of numerous books of literary and cultural criticism, including The Havana Habit, Tongue Ties, and The Cuban Condition. Newsweek included him among "100 Americans to watch for in the 21st century" and Hispanic Business Magazine selected him as one of the "100 most influential Hispanics" in the United States.

This book explores the reception experiences of post-1958 Afro-Cubans in South Florida in relation to their similarly situated "white" Cuban compatriots. Utilizing interviews, ethnographic observations, and applying Census data analyses, Aja begins not with the more socially diverse 1980 Mariel boatlift, but earlier, documenting that a small number of middle-class Afro-Cuban exiles defied predominant settlement patterns in the 1960 and 70s, attempting to immerse themselves in the newly formed but ultimately racially exclusive "ethnic enclave."

How did Cuba's long-established sugar trade result in the development of an agriculture that benefited consumers abroad at the dire expense of Cubans at home? In this history of Cuba, Louis A. Perez proposes a new Cuban counterpoint: rice, a staple central to the island's cuisine, and sugar, which dominated an export economy 150 years in the making. In the dynamic between the two, dependency on food imports--a signal feature of the Cuban economy--was set in place. Cuban efforts to diversify the economy through expanded rice production were met with keen resistance by U.S. rice producers, who were as reliant on the Cuban market as sugar growers were on the U.S. market.

In Unbecoming Blackness, Antonio López uncovers an important, otherwise unrecognized century-long archive of literature and performance that reveals Cuban America as a space of overlapping Cuban and African diasporic experiences. López shows how Afro-Cuban writers and performers in the U.S. align Cuban black and mulatto identities, often subsumed in the mixed-race and postracial Cuban national imaginaries, with the material and symbolic blackness of African Americans and other Afro-Latinas/os.

"Ybor City, Florida, seems to be a happy, secure place in 1958. Three aging sisters - Mina, Clemencia, and Dolores - look forward to seeing their children, in-laws, and grandchildren come for a pleasant visit to this quiet, blue-collar neighborhood that all three call home. But beneath the calm surface, fierce currents surge: old family rivalries, sexual intrigues, class envies, political antagonism, even borderline criminal activity. No one has realized it yet, but this proud Cuban-American clan stands on the brink of a terrible fall."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Continuing the personal saga begun in the National Book Award-winning Waiting for Snow in Havana, the inspiring, sad, funny, bafflingly beautiful story of a boy uprooted by the Cuban Revolution and transplanted to Miami during the years of the Kennedy administration. In his 2003 National Book Award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana, Carlos Eire narrated his coming of age in Cuba just before and during the Castro revolution. That book literally ends in midair as eleven-year-old Carlos and his older brother leave Havana on an airplane--along with thousands of other children--to begin their new life in Miami in 1962.

A reader for your intermediate through early advanced Spanish students, Leyendas cubanas (Olympia Gonzalez) is an important collection of 16 legends from Cuban history and folklore that will enhance Spanish language skills while introducing students to the diversity that defines Cuban culture.

This bilingual book allows young readers to enter Celia Cruz's life as she becomes a well-known singer in her homeland of Cuba, then moves to New York City and Miami where she and others create a new type of music called salsa."

Photojournalist Bernard Wolf traveled to Cuba to produce a book of photographs that give a rare picture of what life is like today on this economically strapped island so close to our shores. The striking, perceptive photographs are accompanied by sprightly text that explains the situation and gives some brief background on Castro's Cuba. Readers are then introduced to a twelve-year-old girl and her family. She is the daughter of two artists, who are well-off by Cuban standards, and American children can compare their lives with hers. Always highly praised for his gorgeous photography, Bernard Wolf presents a sensitive portrait of a talented girl and her immediate world.

In ADRIFT, Alfredo A. Fernandez recounts the saga of the 1994 refugees, tracing the origin of the crisis to the pervasive turmoil produced in Cuba by the 1989-1991 collapse of the USSR and the resulting cut-off of Soviet economic subsidies. During this period, U.S. immigration policy flip-flopped, making the journey to American life for Cubans ever more precarious. In tracking 1994's crisis through ensuing years of global political fallout, Fernandez presents a compelling international gallery of heroes, rogues, survivors, diplomats, and traitors.

In this companion volume to Alma Flor Ada's Where the Flame Trees Bloom, the author offers young readers another inspiring collection of stories and reminiscences drawn from her childhood on the island of Cuba. Through those stories we see how the many events and relationships she enjoyed helped shape who she is today. We learn of a deep friendship with a beloved dance teacher that helped sustain young Alma Flor through a miserable year in school. Heartwarming, poignant, and often humorous, this collection encourages children to discover the stories in their our own lives -- stories that can help inform their own values and celebrate the joys and struggles we all share no matter where or when we grew up.

In this poetic memoir, which won the Pura Belpré Author Award, was a YALSA Nonfiction Finalist, and was named a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree, acclaimed author Margarita Engle tells of growing up as a child of two cultures during the Cold War. Margarita is a girl from two worlds. Her heart lies in Cuba, her mother's tropical island country, a place so lush with vibrant life that it seems like a fairy tale kingdom. But most of the time she lives in Los Angeles, lonely in the noisy city and dreaming of the summers when she can take a plane through the enchanted air to her beloved island. Words and images are her constant companions, friendly and comforting when the children at school are not. Then a revolution breaks out in Cuba.

This series presents exciting historical novels that show the diversity and strength of our American culture. Each volume concludes with a short "Historical Postscript" that tells more about the real people depicted in the story, provides valuable background information on the era described, and lists other books on the subject suitable for young readers. Each book is reviewed for accuracy by a historical expert. It is 1961 and children from Cuba are on a Pedro Pan ("Peter Pan") flight to the U.S., a secret exodus from the instability and turmoil of the Cuban revolution.

Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a young Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, while she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba.

Can thirteen-year-old Arturo Zamora do it all or is he in for a BIG, EPIC FAIL? For Arturo, summertime in Miami means playing basketball until dark, sipping mango smoothies, and keeping cool under banyan trees. And maybe a few shifts as junior lunchtime dishwasher at Abuela's restaurant. Maybe. But this summer also includes Carmen, a poetry enthusiast who moves into Arturo's apartment complex and turns his stomach into a deep fryer. He almost doesn't notice the smarmy land developer who rolls into town and threatens to change it. Arturo refuses to let his family and community go down without a fight, and as he schemes with Carmen, Arturo discovers the power of poetry and protest through untold family stories and the work of José Martí.

In this magical middle-grade debut novel from Adrianna Cuevas, The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, a Cuban American boy must use his secret ability to communicate with animals to save the inhabitants of his town when they are threatened by a tule vieja, a witch that transforms into animals. All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad. When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad's latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn't want anyone to find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals.

In a haunting yet hopeful novel in verse, award-winning author Margarita Engle tells the story of Antonio Chuffat, a young man of African, Chinese, and Cuban descent who became a champion of civil rights. Asia, Africa, Europe--Antonio Chuffat's ancestors clashed and blended on the beautiful island of Cuba. Yet for most Cubans in the nineteenth century, life is anything but beautiful. The country is fighting for freedom from Spain. Enslaved Africans and nearly-enslaved Chinese indentured servants are forced to work long, backbreaking hours in the fields. So Antonio feels lucky to have found a good job as a messenger, where his richly blended cultural background is an asset.

"I find it so easy to forget / that I'm just a girl who is expected / to live / without thoughts." Opposing slavery in Cuba in the nineteenth century was dangerous. The most daring abolitionists were poets who veiled their work in metaphor. Of these, the boldest was Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, nicknamed Tula. In passionate, accessible verses of her own, Engle evokes the voice of this book-loving feminist and abolitionist who bravely resisted an arranged marriage at the age of fourteen, and was ultimately courageous enough to fight against injustice. Historical notes, excerpts, and source notes round out this exceptional tribute.

From award-winning author Margarita Engle comes a lively middle grade novel in verse that tells the story of a Cuban-American boy who visits his family's village in Cuba for the first time--and meets a sister he didn't know he had. Edver isn't happy about being shipped off to Cuba to visit the father he barely knows. The island is a place that no one in Miami ever mentions without a sigh, but travel laws have suddenly changed, and now it's a lot easier for divided families to be reunited. Technology in Cuba hasn't caught up with the times, though, and Edver is expecting a long, boring summer.

A lyrical biography of a Cuban slave who escaped to become a celebrated poet. Born into the household of a wealthy slave owner in Cuba in 1797, Juan Francisco Manzano spent his early years by the side of a woman who made him call her Mama, even though he had a mama of his own. Denied an education, young Juan still showed an exceptional talent for poetry. His verses reflect the beauty of his world, but they also expose its hideous cruelty. Powerful, haunting poems and breathtaking illustrations create a portrait of a life in which even the pain of slavery could not extinguish the capacity for hope.

Acclaimed author Margarita Engle tells a "deeply felt and engrossing" (Horn Book Magazine) story of love in a time of hunger inspired by her own family's struggles during a dark period in Cuba's history. The people of Cuba are living in el período especial en tiempos de paz--the special period in times of peace. That's what the government insists that this era must be called, but the reality behind these words is starvation. Liana is struggling to find enough to eat. Yet hunger has also made her brave: she finds the courage to skip a summer of so-called volunteer farm labor, even though she risks government retribution. Nearby, a quiet, handsome boy named Amado also refuses to comply, so he wanders alone, trying to discover rare sources of food.

When Julian's parents make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two brothers away from Cuba to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation, the boys are thrust into a new world where bullies run rampant and it's not always clear how best to protect themselves. 90 Miles to Havana is a 2011 Pura Belpre Honor Book for Narrative and a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

The Red Umbrella is the moving tale of a 14-year-old girl's journey from Cuba to America as part of Operation Pedro Pan-an organized exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, whose parents sent them away to escape Fidel Castro's revolution.   In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, LucÍa Álvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the soldiers come to her sleepy Cuban town, everything begins to change. Freedoms are stripped away. Neighbors disappear. Her friends feel like strangers. And her family is being watched.  As the revolution's impact becomes more oppressive, LucÍa's parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States-on their own.

Lolcats. Salsa dancing. Unrequited love. Tom Crosshill's smart and witty debut teen novel treads a colorful coming-of-age journey from New York City to Havana that will appeal to fans of books by Matthew Quick and Junot Díaz. When Rick Gutiérrez--known as "That Cat Guy" at school--gets dumped on his sixteenth birthday for uploading cat videos from his bedroom instead of experiencing the real world, he realizes it's time for a change. So Rick joins a salsa class . . . because of a girl, of course. Ana Cabrera is smart, friendly, and smooth on the dance floor. He might be half Cuban, but Rick dances like a drunk hippo. Desperate to impress Ana, he invites her to spend the summer in Havana.

From the author of Moxie comes a stunning novel told in three voices about the lies families tell to survive. Every year, summer begins when the Callahans arrive on Mariposa Island. That's when Elena Finney gets to escape her unstable, controlling mother by babysitting for their two children. And the summer of 1986 promises to be extra special when she meets J.C., the new boy in town, whose kisses make Elena feel like she's been transported to a new world. Joaquin Finney can't imagine why anyone would want to come to Mariposa Island. He just graduated from high school and dreams about going to California to find his father and escape his mother's manipulation.

While violence runs rampant throughout New York, a teenage girl faces danger within her own home in Meg Medina's riveting coming-of-age novel. Nora Lopez is seventeen during the infamous New York summer of 1977, when the city is besieged by arson, a massive blackout, and a serial killer named Son of Sam who shoots young women on the streets. Nora's family life isn't going so well either: her bullying brother, Hector, is growing more threatening by the day, her mother is helpless and falling behind on the rent, and her father calls only on holidays. All Nora wants is to turn eighteen and be on her own. And while there is a cute new guy who started working with her at the deli, is dating even worth the risk when the killer likes picking off couples who stay out too late?

Rosa is cursed by the sea - at least, that's what they say. Dating her is bad news. But Rosa feels more caught than cursed. Caught between cultures and choices. Between her abuela, a beloved healer and pillar of their community, and her mother, an artist who crashes in and out of her life like a hurricane. Between Port Coral, Florida, and Cuba. As her college decision looms, Rosa collides - literally - with Alex, the mysterious boy with tattoos of the ocean. With her heart, her family, and her future on the line, can Rosa break a curse and find her place beyond the horizon?

For Lila Reyes, a summer in England was never part of the plan. The plan was 1) take over her abuela's role as head baker at their panadería, 2) move in with her best friend after graduation, and 3) live happily ever after with her boyfriend. But then the Trifecta happened, and everything--including Lila herself--fell apart. Worried about Lila's mental health, her parents make a new plan for her: Spend three months with family friends in Winchester, England, to relax and reset. But with the lack of sun, a grumpy inn cook, and a small town lacking Miami flavor (both in food and otherwise), what would be a dream trip for some feels more like a nightmare to Lila...until she meets Orion Maxwell.

Violet Paz has just turned fifteen, a pivotal birthday in the eyes of her Cuban grandmother. Fifteen is the age when a girl enters womanhood, traditionally celebrating the occasion with a quinceañero. But while Violet is half Cuban, she's also half Polish, and more importantly, she feels 100% American. Except for her zany family's passion for playing dominoes, smoking cigars, and dancing to Latin music, Violet knows little about Cuban culture, nada about quinces, and only tidbits about the history of Cuba. So when Violet begrudgingly accepts Abuela's plans for a quinceañero-and as she begins to ask questions about her Cuban roots-cultures and feelings collide. The mere mention of Cuba and Fidel Castro elicits her grandparents' sadness and her father's anger. Only Violet's aunt Luz remains open-minded.

Summer just started, and already I can't wait to get out of here to begin my mother-free life at the University of Michigan in August. But until that happens, I'll be teaching art at Camp Anhinga, same as last year. I start tomorrow, and Mom is anything but thrilled. Surprise, surprise. If it weren't for my father, I'd never get to experience college away from home. I'd be stuck, taking classes locally, learning to cook and sew the holes in my brother's underwear on the side, cultivating my domestic skills as a back-up career. Because that's what a good cubanita does, you know, thinks of nothing but home. Yeah. Okay. This is the story of Isabel Dí az, a Cuban-American who would rather just be an American, period.

My name is Julio Ramirez Jr. and baseball is my whole life. Since he was ten, Julio has lived in the shadow of his famous father. Not just because Julio Senior is a pitcher for the Miami Marlins, but because he fled Cuba to play professional baseball

How big is too big? Alex is excited when his Abuela comes from Cuba to stay with him and his parents. He's always wanted a big family. But then more family members start to arrive. Soon, the house is bursting at the seams. Will Alex get a bigger family than maybe he bargained for?

So we purr, cara cara, and we glide, taka taka, and we zoom, zoom, ZOOM! Together, a boy and his parents drive to the city of Havana, Cuba, in their old family car. Along the way, they experience the sights and sounds of the streets--neighbors talking, musicians performing, and beautiful, colorful cars putt-putting and bumpety-bumping along. In the end, though, it's their old car, Cara Cara, that the boy loves best. A joyful celebration of the Cuban people and their resourceful innovation. ALSC Notable Book

It is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not free. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her. Black, white, Cuban, Spanish--Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba. The Surrender Tree is a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, the winner of the 2009 Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award, and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

A look at the life of Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas, from childhood in Cuba to his death in New York City. His writings and homosexuality get him in trouble with Castro's Cuba and he spends two years in prison before leaving for the United States. Victimized by a government that banned his books and jailed him for a crime he didn't commit, [poet] Reinaldo [Arenas] endured unspeakable persecution in a courageous stand against censorship and oppression. Without a country, but not without integrity, he fled to America where he continued to fight for personal expression and produced a stirring body of work.

At age 6, Elian Gonzalez became the center of an epic custody battle between the U.S. and Cuba. At 11, Elian spoke out for the first time, telling Bob Simon about his memories of that period, his current life in Cuba and his relationship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Join Ann Curry as two men search for the people who helped them come to the U.S. when they fled Castro’s Cuba. One hopes to find the family who took him in as a boy while another looks for the shrimp boat skipper who brought him to safety.

Hello, Cuba! is a film that focuses on a group of neighbors living along a quiet suburban street about 15 minutes from the center of Havana by taxi. The people along this street are just emerging from a 60 year-long economic embargo that effectively left the island frozen in time. This engaging documentary showcases the unique culture, warmth, humor, and above all, spirit, of everyday Cubans.

Consists mostly of interviews with Cubans about their opinions on living in Cuba, its revolutionary process, the blockade by the United States against Cuba and famous Cubans of the past such as José Martí. Also includes Cuban music.

In the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean, Cuba is an island teeming with exotic biodiversity, from coral reefs pulsating with life to five-foot-long iguanas. As international relations ease, what will become of this wildlife sanctuary?

One of the first documentaries of its kind, Not Because Fidel Castro Says So candidly examines Cuba’s sexual minorities. Exploring the relationship of gays to the Cuban revolution and the Spanish Catholic Church, it links these relationships to the root of current homophobic attitudes.

In Cuba, more than 50-years of isolation & restrictions have created a society where people have learned to be creative & inventive and adapt to the lack of goods & restrictions. In this film we meet some of these creative & inventive people and gain an amazing insight into how they have overcome many hardships. Cuba is a world leader in affordable health care and many of their medical inventions have been adopted worldwide. We meet the doctors, the inventors of vaccines & the recipients of free health care. Despite the lack of materials, their artists and designers are finding ways of creating amazing new stuff and gaining international recognition. Despite all of these issues, Cuba is changing, opening, reinventing itself.

A hard-hitting Cuban rap group takes on the Cuban state, in this vivid documentary. Los Aldeanos appears out of nowhere and disappears just as quickly. Their protest lyrics are catching on like wildfire, resonating with discontented Cubans, but they get no airtime and their young fans face persecution from the police. Once in circulation, hundreds of copies are made and sold on the street, and the duo's music rises in popularity. Huge crowds turn up to their gigs, and police quickly shut them down with pepper spray and violence. Filmed at great risk to the crew, Viva Cuba Libre is a political statement, an act of rebellion, and an effort to show the troubling reality of modern-day Cuba.