The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World [Paperback]

Cubans today are at home in diasporas that stretch from Miami to Mexico City to Moscow. Back on the island, watching as fellow Cubans leave, the impact of departure upon departure can be wrenching. How do Cubans confront their condition as an uprooted people? The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World offers a stunning chorus of responses, gathering some of the most daring Cuban writers, artists, and thinkers to address the haunting effect of globalization on their own lives.Notes on a Voyage to Germany; C.A.Aguilera Diary of a Return to the Native Land; N.Ara?jo The Woman Who Wanted Bridges; R.Behar Wherever That May Be; R.Blanco Poems from Chile; D.Calder?n A Cuban Sociologist in Puerto Rico; J.Duany? A Cuban Dorothy; E.Rivero Ceremony for a Desperate Actress; A.Estevez Haiku Series Art-work; R.Garc?a Caminos; M.Islas Exile and Bouganvilia; J.Kozer An Interview with Ena Luc?a Portela; I.L?pez Piedra Jaimanitas; R.Lowinger Two Sides of Me; V.P?rez-Konina A Cuban Poet Lives in London; P.P?rez-Sarduy Between Borders: Cubans in Mexico; R.Rojas Other Roads to Santiago; L.Ruiz Citizen of One World; K.Su?rez Cuba in My Heart; L.M.Su?rez

The Portable Island explores the sensibilities of exile with grace to spare, giving voice to the ambivalence with which all of us -whether exiled or not - yearn for what we've lost. The island evoked here is a place both real and mythical: as much a paradise as a hell, as much a point of origin as a destination. Beyond that, these essays and poems also bear eloquent witness to the utter failure of Cuba's so-called Revolution, which wantonly expels whomever it can't devour. - Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana

Ruth Behar and Lucia Suarez serve up a sumptuous feast of love for a lost island. The Portable Island demonstrates the indelible impact Cuba has had not just upon its children but on all who come to know it. - Alfredo Estrada, author of Havana: Autobiography of a City