A warm, emotionally intimate memoir.
An award-winning poet’s memoir of growing up in Miami as the gay son of Cuban immigrants.
Revolution changed Cuba forever. Yet Blanco’s (For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet's Journey, 2013, etc.) family seemed determined to hang on to whatever they could of the lives they knew before Fidel Castro’s takeover. Once the family settled in Miami, his parents went to work at an uncle’s bodega and ate only Cuban food. Meanwhile, Blanco dreamed of becoming like his gringo school friends who ate “Pop-Tarts, Ritz Crackers and Cool Whip.” He tried to introduce his family to American customs like Thanksgiving, only to see those traditions transformed into something with a distinctly Cuban twist. At the same time, Blanco was still fascinated by the country his family had left behind. Not only did they re-create it through the food they sold and ate, but also through the garden that his grandfather planted with the loquat, papaya and avocado trees that reminded them of their “lost [Cuban] paradise.” Born in Madrid just before his family left Spain for the United States, the author soon realized that he existed in a world that was neither completely Cuban nor American: He was “a little from everywhere.” The homosexual desires that surfaced during adolescence and which he kept hidden from his family only added to his feelings of separateness. As a cure for his love of “unmanly” things like his paint-by-number sets and his cousin’s Easy-Bake Oven, Blanco’s homophobic grandmother sent him to work at the bodega. In this space of working-class machismo, Blanco came into contact with a closeted Cuban homosexual who told him about the forbidden affair he had with another man before fleeing to the U.S. Their friendship started the author on the journey toward accepting not only his own gayness, but also the “ghosts of Cuba” that haunted him.
A warm, emotionally intimate memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0062313768
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Take a journey to Ixtlan—by way of Swaziland—in this verbose, self-conscious narrative by the only white man to have ever become a sangoma, a traditional African healer. A former television writer and co-author of Makeba: My Story (not reviewed), Hall spent two years learning how to summon his lidlotis, the spirits of the dead who emerge to possess his body during nightly rituals. As a sangoma-in-training, Hall accumulates eight spirits, including those of a distantly related Scotsman, an American Indian, a fetus (who encourages him to have his own child), and a most incongruous 1930s ad man named Harry, who conversationally tells Hall it was he who thought of the slogan ``Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.'' Under the tutelage of senior sangomas, Hall digs for medicinal roots; reads animal bones to diagnose physical and spiritual ailments of his patients; bathes in goat blood; and divines the location of hidden objects before admiring tribespeople. Yet all is not rosy, since Hall faces grudging acceptance by the community and is perpetually plagued by foot infections arising from nocturnal barefoot dancing while under the thrall of his lidlotis. A self-described former ``casual'' Catholic, Hall continually confronts his own doubts about the legitimacy of his experiences. Is he schizophrenic, he wonders? Would anyone back home in the States believe him? Is he worthy of being a sangoma? After easily resolving these questions through a fairly insignificant encounter with a colorful troubadour, Hall undergoes his final ritual tests (which include a vomiting contest) and becomes a full-fledged traditional healer. Hall's prose drips with hackneyed phrases such as ``muscular mountains'' and ``ineffable sadness,'' and while he faithfully describes his ritual training, the details can become wearying, particularly the daily digging and grinding of sacred herbs. Readers curious about this vanishing tribal practice may find Hall's book informative, as will glossolaliacs who will appreciate his lidlotis utterances. (8 pages of b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1994
ISBN: 0-87477-780-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
This biography of South Carolina politician Byrnes offers historical insight but ultimately descends into hagiography. Robertson traces James Byrnes's rise from poverty in his native Charleston, S.C., to the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, a tenure as so-called ``assistant president'' to FDR during WW II, his stint as secretary of state under Truman, and, finally, his governorship of South Carolina. Robertson (who has taught creative writing at Clemson Univ.) recounts Byrnes's special relationship with FDR and his great disappointment when Roosevelt, after leading Byrnes to believe that he would be his vice presidential running mate in 1944, excluded him from the ticket. He was deemed too antilabor, and his reputation as a racist was seen as a threat to the black vote for FDR in the North. Furthermore, Byrnes who had been born a Catholic, had converted to Protestantism, and this alienated both Catholics and Protestants. Thus Byrnes ``almost'' became president, but because of his political drawbacks, it was Harry Truman who garnered that prize. Byrnes topped off his career by successfully running for governor of his home state. He is remembered as a racist who did his best to fight the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. In his latter years, Byrnes was in the vanguard of Democrats backing Republican candidates before the GOP was acceptable in Dixie. Robertson's romanticizing of Byrnes borders on hero worship. He makes the hyperbolic statement that Byrnes had better political skills than FDR, who is considered by most historians to have been the country's master politician. Robertson's writing is also riddled with clichÇs, and redundancies clog the text. Although we learn much about Byrnes and the politics of his era, this work is, in the end, disappointing. Byrnes, an important figure, deserves a better biography.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03367-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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