WE ARE PAN

Children escape Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

A young girl eagerly accepts a copy of Vogue from her doting father; a bespectacled boy forms a romantic friendship with a male classmate while dreaming of attending art school abroad; teenage sweethearts navigate their families’ class divide; a nightclub musician cares for his young son. Castro is about to come to power, and a year and half passes as his regime takes hold. Material goods are scarce, education is restricted, neighbors turn against neighbors, and families are pressured to send their teenagers into the military or rural education service. Meanwhile, in Florida, one heroic priest is planning an exodus, Operation Pedro Pan, to help children and teenagers escape Castro’s Cuba and find refuge in the United States. Frattino’s story is comfortably methodical—establishing characters in crisis, building to conflict, and resolving things fairly neatly with moving sacrifices made along the way. This straightforward narrative melds well with Montanez’s classic comic-book cartooning: charmingly retro in color and character appearance. But while the comic-book tone produces a satisfying story, it also puts the reader at a remove from the societal crisis at its core. Historical context exists primarily as a force pushing on the story’s plotlines, and Castro looms as a boogeyman rather than a painful reality. Perhaps the most effective and chilling scene is when the nightclub guitarist dreams of his young son in military uniform, sporting an eerily comedic Castro beard—but these visceral moments of existential terror are often superseded by procedural drama and character simplification. Aiming to be both an engaging reading experience and a synopsis of historical events, the book stumbles somewhat on both counts.

A dramatized consideration of a complex, thorny history.