Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You
When is your culture bad for you? That is the question that weaves its way through Oye What I'm Gonna Tell You, a startling collection chronicling the lives of Cuban Americans from WWII-era Havana to contemporary times in "el norte." Whether they inhabit blue collar neighborhoods in the northeast, the increasingly Latino-populated south, or Florida, the characters that populate this book—many of whom are the children and grandchildren of exiles, who have been raised in traditional Cuban homes but whose only homeland has been the United States—must decide what to take and what to leave from their upbringing.
Marielitos, Balseros and Other Exiles
A panoramic portrait of the Cuban American community, Marielitos, Balseros and Other Exiles shares the joys, tragedies, and amazing resiliency of the Cuban immigrants who arrived in this country via the Mariel boat lift of 1980 (marielitos) and the “rafters” (balseros) who came in the years afterward. This debut collection reveals the full social, economic and emotional scope of the immigrant experience, from the repression that many of the “boat people” experienced in Castro’s Cuba, the discrimination they encounter upon their arrival in America, and their struggles to build a new life in the United States. Written in an arresting style that marries English with the native Spanish of the characters, this collection is an important achievement by a new voice in Latino Literature.
Everyday Chica
Everyday Chica, winner of the 2010 Longleaf Press Poetry Award, offers readers an evocative poetic rendering of the Cuban-American experience in language so personal and deeply felt that it becomes for readers the universal language of all natives and exiles, of dislocations and homecomings.
Everyday Chica, Music and More
This spoken word CD includes the poems from the Everyday Chica chapbook plus new and selected poems set to Caribbean folk music performed by Kevin Meehan and Jorge Milanés. The story "Muchacha" is also included.