Cubiyanqui

Author’s note: This was first published 2/14/10. It is still my reality, that of millions of Cubans and others around the world who’ve suffered the same fate as I throughout our imperfect history.

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Forty years ago today I became an exile.

I left Cuba on a day like today as a fourteen-year-old with my seventeen-year-old sister, traveling through Spain to get to the promised land: Southern California. This is where our cousins — the ones that sent for us — had settled. An American friend of theirs from church had donated the money to pay for my airfare. My cousins had paid for my sister’s.

In Spain we stayed with friends that were making the same trip but who were ahead of us by a couple of months. My parents were to join us later in Los Angeles, if everything worked out. It was not until years later that I was able to comprehend how big an if that had been.

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(Note: This is an excerpt from From Mountain Road to Easy Street, a work in progress. You can also catch me reading from this novel HERE. This is a first draft. Please keep that in mind if you come upon a clunky sentence or a misspelled word or two…and if you like it, please consider backing the publication of my debut novel HERE).

There was silence in the bus as we drove towards New York City. The full morning got on like any other passenger right after the Bear Mountain Bridge. The Hudson appeared out my window every so often, my traveling companion going in the same direction.

My father, his eyes closed and his head resting, was seating next to me. He was wearing the same light blue, short-sleeve shirt in which he had been buried.

I got closer to see if he was breathing.

“I’m just resting my eyes. I’m awake, if you want to talk.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“Cooperstown.”

“What were you doing up there?”

“I wanted to see if Tony Oliva was going to get in this year. It was the first year he was eligible since he retired.”

“Was he?”

“No. This was also the first year for Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson. Those two sucked up all the votes.”

“Maybe next year.”

“Yeah, there’s always next year. How about you, where you coming from?”

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(Also posted at Kickstarter as a project update)

Most of the people I write about in ESPERANZA FARM are composites of people I’ve met at some point in my life. A few are completely made up to fit a particular story-telling need while others are closer to their real life persona.

Reinaldo, a next door neighbor and confidant of the young protagonist, fits the latter group:

Reinaldo Garsa, who had lived in the United States for many years, was saying that an attack by the United States on Cuba could come any minute. People believed him when he said that the plane that flew low above the fields earlier that afternoon was an American spy plane. Reinaldo should have known, they said, because he had fought as a Sergeant in the American Army during the Korean War.

“Reinaldo” was my real-life neighbor. I remember the content of our frequent conversations, his very strong opinions about the Cuban government and other matters. I could also recall his descriptions of New York from the time in the forties and fifties when he made the city his home. His love of baseball is still fresh in my memory. But because I had not seen him in approximately forty years, his physical features were lost to me. It’s odd how one can remember almost all about a person from one’s past, except their face. That was until very recently, when I discovered the photo that accompanies this update.

Suddenly, “Reinaldo” came back to life and I realized, at the same time, where his love of baseball probably came from: he managed one of the baseball teams that traveled my province, Pinar del Rio, delighting Sunday fans. This was a detail I did not know about the character or about the person.

I’m considering slipping that detail — about him being a manager — into the final revision of the manuscript. It would add depth and context to the character. I also know it would please the person I knew.

“Reinaldo” is the man on the far right. Looking at the photograph, I concluded that he came to the ballpark straight from work. He was in such a hurry to get to the game that he didn’t have time to change. “Let’s get this damn ceremonial first pitch over,” I can imagine him thinking, “let’s play ball.”

You can’t grieve with the rest of the family, you can’t call and sometimes you don’t find out for days. If you live here, you can’t really travel there overnight.

Last week my uncle on my mother’s side died in Cuba. Last night it was my aunt on my father’s. The older generation is dying off.

Justo and Maria Teresa. I had not seen either one of them in over thirty years. I remember their sweetness and their apolitical nature. These two belonged to the family faction that continued talking to us even after my parents announced their plans to apply for an exit visa to go North. On my Dad’s side, Maria Teresa was the exception. Even though she was married to a military man, my aunt kept coming around and we continued visiting her.

My Mom’s side of the family was less involved in the Castro government. They were less “political,” so not much changed between us, even after our status was degraded from typical citizens to counter-revolutionary worms on account of our political preferences and our travel plans.

Whenever I hear that someone in my family has died, I always picture the reunion on the other side with those that left before. These must be happy reunions, I imagine, because before the Castro brothers decided to impose their brand of paradise on our little paradise, our family got along just fine. The split in the family started showing in the early Sixties, right around the time that the Cuban Revolution was hijacked by a bunch of hoodlums.

Right around that time, the effects of the new socio-political order tore up the work that previous generations had done to keep us together.

Each time a relative dies over there, I reminded of the first time it happened after we had settled here in 1970. I was the time my grandfather died.  It was in 1976. We heard about it from a cousin in Florida. It was a very painful experience for my father who adored Grandpa Baldomero. Somehow he managed to find out the name of the funeral home in Havana where the service was being held. He called, desperate to connect to his mother, older brother and three sisters. He asked for his older brother by name, when the funeral director answered the phone. He waited for any member of the family to come to the phone.

A few minutes the director was back on the phone. There was no one there by that name, he informed my father — even after he agreed originally to go get one of his relatives.

I remember Dad’s cries filling our railroad apartment in Union City after he hung up the phone. The sight of a crying father really impresses a teenager. I never forgot it.

We didn’t talk about it afterward but we all knew what had happened. My uncle was the national director of some Communist ministry. He didn’t want to appear to have a relationship with anyone who had renounced the Revolution that he so valued. A call from the United States, even if from a grieving brother, could compromise your revolutionary standing. My Dad eventually, if not instantly, forgave my uncle. He understood his blind, political fanaticism. Me, I’m not so sure.

Families members on different sides of a political — and physical — gulf. The reality of life in exile.

A few days ago, I wrote about my decision to become an independent publisher. This was for the purpose of self-publishing my novel ESPERANZA FARM, the story of a 13 year-old Cuban boy whose dreams of becoming a baseball star are forever derailed. You can read the first chapter HERE.

I recently became aware of Kickstarter, “a new way to fund ideas & endeavors.” I was very impress with the simplicity of the concept and the elegant execution. I read how other writers had found backers and had successfully launched their projects. I know a great opportunity when I see it so I pitched my project to them.

Today I received an email telling me that my project had been accepted.

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Cover photo © by Johannes Frandsen. Used by permission. Please visit www.johannesfrandsen.com

(You can read the first chapter HERE. You can join my “publishing group”, a bunch of friends supporting the publication of the book HERE).

After a lot of careful consideration, I’ve decided to self-publish my novel ESPERANZA FARM. Last week I emailed a literary agent who was reading a partial, letting her know that I was withdrawing the manuscript from consideration. Here’s the reasoning that preceded this decision:

I have nothing against the traditional publishing model, a route which continues to work for most authors and one I tried myself for a while. Even if I did not succeeded at it — in most cases it takes a lot of time and persistence — I received enough feedback from people in the industry to know that my book has a pretty good chance of eventually selling to a commercial publisher, if that was what I wanted to do. So this decision is not born out of rejections, of which I received my fair share, but has been more influenced by things I’ve learned in the process of finding and agent and publisher.

The reason I’ve decided to go at it as an independent publisher has more to do with what I believe is better for my book. And by the possibilities of participating in other aspect of the book world that have always captivated my interests.

The facts are that I also love the whole publishing, marketing, sales, design, publicity, entrepreneurial side of books. I love writing, reading, researching, talking about literature, rewriting and reading industry trade news. I love old books, new books, e-books, even comic books. And I’m most fascinated with the future of the book, especially how it intersects with the new media.

So this is a grand experiment and an exciting learning opportunity as well as a challenge.

One of the advantages of publishing your own material is the control that is possible over every aspect of the project. Where will it be printed, what process will be used and what distribution method. Not to mention the actual design components right down to the typeface. A perfect example of this benefit is the photograph I’ve chosen for the cover. A number of months ago, my daughter sent me a link to the website of a photographer whose work she admired. I fell in love with the work of Andrew Moore but was blown away when I came upon this photograph. I knew I had found the cover for my novel. I contacted Mr. Moore directly and soon had an agreement on the licensing terms. (This has changed, since I’ve decided to go in another direction with the cover photograph. I will blog about it soon, just after I’ve notified the interested parties).

This is now done. You can read more about it HERE.

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If my Dad was alive, today would have been his 78th birthday.  He died in a car accident in Cuba in 1979. He was 47 years old.  I almost died with him.

On a day like today, I am remembering his courage and his grace.

I would love to tell you a little bit about both.

We were in Cuba visiting the family we had left behind a decade earlier.  We were one of the first groups to travel back to Cuba under the Family Reunification Act.  This was an agreement entered into by both the Cuban and American governments to allow family members living in the US the opportunity to visit relatives on the island.

Like a lot of Cuban families, ours had been split along political lines.  After supporting the Revolution from its infancy, my Dad broke with it in the early Sixties.  He felt the original promises of the Revolution — a return to democracy after Batista, with the Constitution of 1940 as guide — had been betrayed.  He called the Castro gang the real counter-revolutionaries.  After the nationalization of private property — including my Dad’s humble-single pump Sinclair station — and the declaration by Castro that communism, not democracy was the future for Cuba, Dad filed the necessary paperwork to emigrate to this country.  I can only imagine the pain Dad must have felt leaving his family and friends behind and move to a country that spoke a different language and lived a different culture.  He was only allowed to take with him the clothes on his back.

About a quarter of my family did the same thing.  The other three quarters stayed behind with different degrees of involvement in the Castro government.  Some close relatives, believers in and defenders of the Revolution, were high up in governmental circles.  I loved these people as much as I loved the ones that made it across the Florida Straits.  My Dad taught me that.  I never heard him say one negative, unloving thing about any family member that had chosen differently than him.  He had a big, accepting heart.

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(Una version en Ingles de este articulo se encuentra AQUI)

He sido bloqueado por un usuario de Twitter que dice ser un canal para los que no tienen voz y son oprimidos en Cuba. Esto nunca me habia sucedido a mí.

Yo confundi este sitio, cuyo eslogan dice: “La prensa libre es la madre de todas nuestras libertades y de nuestro progreso bajo la libertad” y que retuitea este tipo de mensaje: “Internet es nuestra fuerza, no nos pueden callar!” con un lugar donde la discusión honesta sobre las cuestiones importantes se podía llevar acabo y donde la crítica justa y constructiva sería bienvenida.

Parece que me equivocaba.

Al parecer ofendi a alguien cuando me queje de chistes chocantes y homofóbicos, de comentarios racistas y de propaganda de la ultra-derecha Estadounidense. Yo no he podido encontrar ninguna otra razón. Y para comprender mejor lo que pasó, voy a hacer un breve recuento de los acontecimientos que llevaron a mi “prohibición”.

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(A Spanish version of this post is HERE)

I’ve been blocked by a Twitter user who claims to be an outlet for the voiceless and oppressed in Cuba. This is a first one for me.

I mistook  this site, which displays this slogan: “The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty” and that retweets this kind of message:  “Internet is our force, they can not silence us!” for a place where honest discussion about important issues could be had and where fair and constructive criticism would be welcomed.

It appears that I was mistaken.

I must have gotten on somebody’s bad side for complaining about crude, homophobic jokes, racist remarks and U. S. Right Wing propaganda. I could not come up with any other reason. So in order to better understand what happened, I’ll do a brief recounting of the events that led up to my “banning.”

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(Author’s Note: The following is an excerpt from a work in progress, From Mountain Road to Easy Street, a fictionalized memoir I hope to complete this year — if it doesn’t kill me first. This is a first draft so I hope you can excuse any typos or imperfections).

“What’s the matter? Why did you stop in mid-sentence?”

“I don’t know why I’m talking so much. I sound like a crazy person.”

“It’s understandable. I like listening to your story. I have a chance to catch up with your life for the last ten years. So, please go on.”

“Well, if you start feeling dizzy from me talking too much, tell me to shut up. After the trip was over, if Dad missed California and his cousins, he never mentioned it, but he did miss the car that we left behind. Dad had wanted to drive us to New Jersey. We had a 1962 Chevy Impala — by then it was like eight years old — but he thought it was a great car. Lando had to talk him out of it, telling him that if it broke down somewhere, it would cost us a hell of a lot more to tow it and repair it in the middle of nowhere. Well, I think that Dad was glad that he had listened to Lando when he saw the desert that first night, because it looked so damn scary. I am sure that it crossed his mind, breaking down there. It would have made Mom absolutely crazy. I think it would have been hell for all of us. My poor old man. He did get a chance to drive an Impala across the country years later, though. This was a Chevy they bought brand new, with their savings and their credit. It was avocado green with a beige top that was the love of his life. He thought Chevrolet made the best cars in the world. We drove down to Miami from New Jersey to see family and friends. It was Seventy Four or Seventy Five, I don’t know for sure. It was Mom, Dad, Elena and Sonia my girlfriend. Dad even let me drive parts of the way….”

“Why are you smiling?”

“I just remember something about that trip that was funny.”

“What? Tell me.”

“You can take the peasant out of the countryside but you can’t take the countryside out of the peasant. Mom insisted on cooking pork chunks to take on the road the day before we were to travel south. I don’t know if she thought there would be no food joint open between Union City and Miami but she brought, along with her espresso maker, the pork chunks in the oil in a pot and she stored it in the trunk, neatly packed next to our bags and all the crap we were taking for our vacation.

“Well, we were driving along, happy as can be but the smell of frying pork was trailing us from state to state and we couldn’t figure out why the smell was so strong. So in one of those rest-stops that they have on the highways over there, Dad popped the trunk just to see what was going on. When I saw him shaking his head, I knew something was wrong. The summer sun hitting the car for hours at a time most have sent the temperature inside the trunk to a thousand degrees because it made the oil hotter than a deep frier. It splashed oil over everything. Dad was furious about the mess and we spent an hour cleaning the car. We did eat the pork in the rest-stop with Cuban bread and Coca Colas but the aroma inside the car, that followed us all the way to Miami.

—Image: My 1962 Chevy 283 engine with stick shift in front of 11430 S. Yale 1961 © 2010 by James Voves. Please visit his Flickr Page