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1st out of 41 books
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Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy
by
Carlos Eire
In 1962, at the age of eleven, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba, his parents left behind. His life until then is the subject of Waiting for Snow in Havana, a wry, heartbreaking, intoxicatingly beautiful memoir of growing up in a privileged Havana household -- and of being exiled from his own childhood by the Cuban revolution.
That chi...more
That chi...more
Paperback, 400 pages
Published
February 5th 2003
by Free Press
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In 1962 Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba-exiled from his family at age 11. The Cuban revolution took away his family, his beloved country, his friends, and, most importantly, his childhood. The memories of his Cuban life are an exorcisan and to tribute to a paradise lost: the island of his youth. The lizards, turquoise seas and sun drenched siestas are the heart of this memoir. After Castro ousts Batista music sounds like gunfire, Christmas is illegal, and the w...more
Joy H.
marked it as read-partially
Recommended to Joy H. by:
My town library's book club
Added 7/6/08.
So far, this book looks like it may be a winner for me. I'm enjoying the author's style of writing, very engaging, and sometimes very poetic.
Here's a sample from p.13: "The waves, those turquoise waves... lapping, lapping, lapping endlessly, eternally. Even in the worst of storms the waves were always a lover's caress, an untiring embrace, an endless shower of kisses."
NOTE: I didn't have time to finish this book. I had to return it to the library. ...more
So far, this book looks like it may be a winner for me. I'm enjoying the author's style of writing, very engaging, and sometimes very poetic.
Here's a sample from p.13: "The waves, those turquoise waves... lapping, lapping, lapping endlessly, eternally. Even in the worst of storms the waves were always a lover's caress, an untiring embrace, an endless shower of kisses."
NOTE: I didn't have time to finish this book. I had to return it to the library. ...more
From Publishers Weekly
"Metaphors matter to me, especially perfect ones," Yale historian Eire writes in this beautifully fashioned memoir, as he recounts one of many wonderfully vibrant stories from his boyhood in 1950s Havana. As imaginatively wrought as the finest piece of fiction, the book abounds with magical interpretations of ordinary boyhood events-playing in a friend's backyard is like a perilous journey through the jungle; setting off firecrackers becomes a lyrical, cosmi...more
"Metaphors matter to me, especially perfect ones," Yale historian Eire writes in this beautifully fashioned memoir, as he recounts one of many wonderfully vibrant stories from his boyhood in 1950s Havana. As imaginatively wrought as the finest piece of fiction, the book abounds with magical interpretations of ordinary boyhood events-playing in a friend's backyard is like a perilous journey through the jungle; setting off firecrackers becomes a lyrical, cosmi...more
Carlos Eire was born during the 1950s into a fairly well off family in Havana on the island of Cuba. The son of a judge, Carlos and his brother learned to expect special privileges that came from being the children of a well-respected and powerful man. But everything in his life began to change when Fidel Castro waged revolution and toppled the Batista government. In the early 60s, at the age of 11, he and his older brother were sent to the U.S. to keep them safe. They never returned to Cuba.
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Full disclosure: The author of this book is a family friend, and although I wouldn't say that I know him well, I have met him a few times.
Some people have fascinating stories to tell. Some people are able to write well. A select few people have both interesting stories, and a flair for authoring. Carlos Eire is one of those people.
On its surface, this is a very simple book. It's about a story that most people are at least moderately familiar with. Fidel Castro leads ...more
Some people have fascinating stories to tell. Some people are able to write well. A select few people have both interesting stories, and a flair for authoring. Carlos Eire is one of those people.
On its surface, this is a very simple book. It's about a story that most people are at least moderately familiar with. Fidel Castro leads ...more
“The world changed while I slept, and nobody had consulted me.” Carlos Eire open his childhood memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana in a simply and beautifully profound way of indicating the theme of his book: Change!
Carlos Eire was born in Cuba in 1950. He was one of those fourteen thousands children, who fled Cuba to America in 1962 after Fidel Castro took over control of the government. Before reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965, Carlos Eire had been through a series of foster...more
Carlos Eire was born in Cuba in 1950. He was one of those fourteen thousands children, who fled Cuba to America in 1962 after Fidel Castro took over control of the government. Before reunited with his mother in Chicago in 1965, Carlos Eire had been through a series of foster...more
I found this on the shelf at the thrift store. I picked it up because my new brother in law is Cuban, having left Cuba as a child. So when I saw Havana on the spine - I paid my eighty cents, hoping to satiate some of my new curiosity in all things Cuban.
Of course, Carlos lived in Cuba long before my brother in law. Carlos was a child who knew Cuba before Fidel, before the Revolution, which makes his story that much harder to read. He knew what he was loosing, having grown up in a ver...more
Of course, Carlos lived in Cuba long before my brother in law. Carlos was a child who knew Cuba before Fidel, before the Revolution, which makes his story that much harder to read. He knew what he was loosing, having grown up in a ver...more
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Another memoir, this one by a history professor at Yale who recounts his boyhood years in Cuba during the revolution. Being obsessed with Cuba myself, I found all the details about life among the privileged set of great interest. It was a little heavy-handed, I'm afraid. I would have preferred this one if he let the anecdotes stand on their own, but he seemed unable to resist underscoring all sorts of points that are very obvious. Little boys like to play with firecrackers, and then the bombs in...more
It is not hard to understand why Carlos Eire's memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana won the 2003 National Book Award for nonfiction. It is beautifully written in a poetic style that I cannot compare to anyone else's. His boyhood memories come alive with perfectly balanced doses of hilarity and poignancy and they are fascinating.
Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left in 1962, one of fourteen hundred children who arrived in the United States without their parents, airlifted out o...more
Carlos Eire was born in Havana in 1950 and left in 1962, one of fourteen hundred children who arrived in the United States without their parents, airlifted out o...more
It's hard to know how to rate this book on the author's childhood in Havana. I did NOT like the amount of profanity in the book. In fact, most books I'd have instantly put down that had this much. I think, in this book, the profanity was almost the author's way of trying to keep a little distance, keep out some of the strong emotion. So I just ignored it. It helped that a lot of it was in Spanish. I know the words, but they just don't always have the same shock value as your OWN culture's ...more
I've been putting off writing this review because I've been unable to decide how many stars this book should get: 4 or 5.
Well, Internet, the wait is over. I figured if I was this torn, why not give it the benefit of the doubt and go with the higher rating, so 5 it is.
There were multiple occasions in this book when I laughed so hard I cried - Eire does an absolutely magnificent job of reliving his upper-class Cuban childhood, to the point that I kind of want to ditch mine...more
Well, Internet, the wait is over. I figured if I was this torn, why not give it the benefit of the doubt and go with the higher rating, so 5 it is.
There were multiple occasions in this book when I laughed so hard I cried - Eire does an absolutely magnificent job of reliving his upper-class Cuban childhood, to the point that I kind of want to ditch mine...more
As the son of two Cuban-Americans driven from their homeland by a tragic communist revolution, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In response to the constant pestering by my mother to read it, I finally picked up the novel, which was written by Carlos Eire, a man who not only has a great name but is also my mother's age.
The writing style of this autobiographical novel is quite unique. The chapters of Eire's book seem to jump non-chronologically from one childhood instance in pre-Castr...more
The writing style of this autobiographical novel is quite unique. The chapters of Eire's book seem to jump non-chronologically from one childhood instance in pre-Castr...more
Through Eire's memoir, the reader vicariously experiences a childhood painfully interrupted by a political revolution. In this case, the child is growing up in Cuba in 1959, the year Fidel Castro comes to power. Writing decades later, the author skillfully uses humor and satire to camouflage the anger and grief he felt at being sent to the U.S. with his brother but without their parents, and his subsequent struggles. The uprooting was made worse because Eire's family had been well-to-do; he h...more
My ambivalence about this book, I think, comes from my personal empathic paradox. On one hand, I try very hard to understand the pain a little boy thrust from his parents and country feels. On the other hand, I have an empathic failure when I try to feel sorrow for a privileged rich kid whose privilege and fortune didn't last. Eire's memoir, while nicely written, suffers from heavy-handed judgments that aren't clearly delineated between Eire's interchanging personas of backwards-looking adult an...more
Carlos Eire was about 9 when Castro's revolution took over Cuba, and he left at 11 for the U.S. without his parents to live in a an orphanage, then with foster families under a program to help Cuban refugee children until his mother was able to come to the U.S. By that time, he had become independent, or at least emotionally buffered, to withstand the trauma he'd experienced. After nearly 40 years making his way in this country, he painfully wrote this memoir of his childhood in Cuba and the i...more
A very engaging memoir, and impressive coming from an author who had never written anything, as he says, "without footnotes." While not always well-controlled, the writing is often sharp and vivid, and in many places wildly funny. Eire seems to have an unusually clear recollection of what it's like to be a child, and as a result he writes kid-dialogue that's really convincing--a rare skill.
It helps, of course, that he has a fascinating tale to tell. I'd never heard of the ...more
It helps, of course, that he has a fascinating tale to tell. I'd never heard of the ...more
This book was an average read in that it had some pretty great parts balanced out with some pretty dull parts. The whole story is remembrances of growing up in Cuba pre-Castro.
The first half captured me-I thought the author did a great job of writing so I could feel exactly what he felt and did as a child. It was an enlightening and educational view of Cuba that I had certainly never heard before.
Towards the middle, the author starts slipping back and forth between c...more
The first half captured me-I thought the author did a great job of writing so I could feel exactly what he felt and did as a child. It was an enlightening and educational view of Cuba that I had certainly never heard before.
Towards the middle, the author starts slipping back and forth between c...more
Take Frank McCourt fold in a heaping glob of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, sprinkle freely w/lots of bathos and pathos…bake it in the Cuban sun, and you have a “memoir” that reads like a fairy tale!! Fairy tales in my world are scary, they include evil (“a presence , real and cunning”), and hardship, but, if not resolved in a happy ending, fairy tales take you on an unsafe, exciting, adventure peopled by brave boys and girls.
Like Frank McCourt before him Carlos Eire, writes better tha...more
Like Frank McCourt before him Carlos Eire, writes better tha...more
Subtitled “Confessions of a Cuban Boy,” this memoir first caught my eye because of the great title, then because it was written by one of the boys separated from his family during the early reign of Fidel Castro, during the Operation Pedro Pan exodus, an attempt to save children of those deemed against the Revolution, those most in danger.
The book almost lost me when the author along with other little boys, cruel as children often can be, started torturing lizards, symbolic of much t...more
The book almost lost me when the author along with other little boys, cruel as children often can be, started torturing lizards, symbolic of much t...more
This is the only memoire I've read by someone who lived through Castro's take over of Cuba. The author was 9 or 10-years old when the Revolution took place. By the time he was 11, Fidel was firmly in power, and his parents sent him to the U.S. where he knew no one. It took his mother 3 and a half years to secure an exit permit and join him, and he never saw his father again. It is a compelling portrait of the rich childhood he had, the adaptations he had to make as an exile, and how his Cuban cu...more
While reading this book in the late '90s, I realized that the neighborhood Carlos was taking about in Havana was mine, Miramar. I could not wait until the end of the book to track him down. A quick Google search found him teaching at Yale. I told him where I had lived and asked how close had his house been. He answered right back and it turns out he lived across Fifth Avenue from me and we played in the giant ficus trees on opposite ends of the same park!
As much as I enjoyed the book...more
As much as I enjoyed the book...more
Eire's memoir is utterly enchanting. His elegant and lively tales bring 1950s Havana to life. From boys-will-be-boys shenanigans involving lizards and fireworks, to a young man's hopes, dreams and darkest fears, a young Carlos quickly makes his way into the reader's heart.
Havana sparkles brightly in Eire's hands, a living-color Disneyland--colorful, sunny, glamorous and exciting--but turns grimly dark and threatening in Castro's shadow.
The book features quite a cast of qu...more
Havana sparkles brightly in Eire's hands, a living-color Disneyland--colorful, sunny, glamorous and exciting--but turns grimly dark and threatening in Castro's shadow.
The book features quite a cast of qu...more
Carlos Eire delivered a poignant, yet complex, memoir told in many vibrant tales about his childhood and subsequent exodus from Cuba in 1962. In 1959, Castro sent troops to oust then President Batista which led to an unstable political climate.
Eire, as a son of a somewhat quirky, but wealthy, judge with an imaginative mind who believed himself to be a reincarnated Louis XVI, sent his sons (Carlos and Tony) to an elite school. When Castro came to power, all of the little luxuries su...more
Eire, as a son of a somewhat quirky, but wealthy, judge with an imaginative mind who believed himself to be a reincarnated Louis XVI, sent his sons (Carlos and Tony) to an elite school. When Castro came to power, all of the little luxuries su...more
Carlos Eire was born in 1950 in Cuba, and came of age in a well-to-do household (his father was a judge) when Castro took over and the Bay of Pigs invasion failed. He was one of 14,000 children air-lifted to the United States in 1962 as part of the Pedro Pan operation. His vivid (but in my opinion, rambling) stream-of-consciousness memories did conjure a fascinating glimpse of their interesting and privileged life in Cuba, and his wrenching depiction of some early traumas and especially the actu...more
This is an account of one young boys early childhood in Cuba just before Castro came into power. We see a young boy from the middle class with his older brother and their friends participating in all kinds of typical mischief.
What interested me was how life changed with Castro: the executions, the loudspeakers broadcasting his speeches, the shortages of food and necessities, the seizure of property, and the confiscation of bank accounts - all in the name of the revolution. We see ho...more
What interested me was how life changed with Castro: the executions, the loudspeakers broadcasting his speeches, the shortages of food and necessities, the seizure of property, and the confiscation of bank accounts - all in the name of the revolution. We see ho...more
p 190 - On last Christmas Eve in Cuba coming from grandparent's house: "That beautiful silent night God willed that we drive home the long way, down the Malecon, the boulevard that ran along the seashore, the road where we always went car surfing. My brother and I were wired up, abuzz with anticipation. But we didn't need to talk about it. Really good things don't need words. No. The best thing about really good things is that you can just sit there with someone else and not say a word....more
Excellent writer, but sometimes frustrating to read the story of the life of an 8 year old boy who spends so much time with 'violent' play....It does present a picture of pre-Castro Cuba through the eyes of a middle to upper class child. His Pedro-Pan experiences in the US in the early 60's are also very graphic and such a contrast to his childhood in Havana. It was a hard life. I find it interesting to see how much Cuba is both loved and denigrated and how the US, too, was seen through the e...more
This book was very interesting. I find that I understand historical events better in the context of memoir and narrative, and Eire's childhood view of the Cuban Revolution offered amazing insight into the complexities of the time. I liked that he did not glamorize or white wash any of the events. He showed the imbalance and the poverty in Cuba before the Revolution, and he showed those same things after the Revolution. He showed how power corrupts, and through the eyes of a child it seems ev...more
It is hard to describe this book - an engaging, emotional, funny, sad, lovely "sort of" memoir. It took me a chapter or two to appreciate the unusual writing style but once hooked I found the book wonderful. The author was born in Cuba and lived there until he was eleven at which time he along with 14,000 children were flown to the US after the fall of Battista and the ascendancy of Fidel Castro. This is not a chronological history; the author describes several incidents that happene...more
This book made me realize how little I know about Cuban history. The author's well-described memories gave me insight on the "paradise lost" of the Cuba of his youth - the time before Fidel came into power - and the way life drastically changed for him and all Cubans during the Revolution. The transition into a communist nation was anything but easy - people stripped completely of everything they worked hard to have or to be. It made me contemplate "freedom" and the concep...more
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