Waiting for Snow in Havana

WAITING FOR SNOW IN HAVANA: CONFESSIONS OF A CUBAN BOY: Carlos Eire: Free Press (2003): Biography: 383 pages

This wonderful memoir won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 2003. It has also been used as a community wide reading selection in several US cities. The author describes his boyhood in pre-Castro Cuba with flash-forwards to his difficult years in the US as one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba to new lives. The events and characters in the book are described through the eyes of a child. I guess I would say that the book is magical realism because the child’s view is sometimes so fantastic and distorted. Yet a clarity about the fate of Cuba and its people also permeates the book through the author’s grief for his lost homeland, friends, parents and way of life.

I really enjoyed the book but it is not a book you read through in a night. A great one to add to my list of multicultural favorites.

SH